The Wheel on the School

by Meindert DeJong

We read this as a family in the evenings. The kids in Shora, a Dutch fishing village, learn that they might get storks to make their nests in Shora if they can find a wagon wheel and set it up on a roof. They have crazy adventures finding a wheel and get the whole town involved.

They get to know Grandmother Sibble the Third (who remembers when there were storks in the town long ago), Janus (whose legs were “bitten off by a mosquito,” and before getting to know the kids, he would sit in his fenced in back yard and sling rocks at kids and birds who tried to take cherries from his tree), old Douwa (93 years old – as a kid, he saved his dad by digging a hole in an upside-down boat. That same boat had a wagon wheel under it, which little Lina discovers, and the townspeople work together to get it out before the tide comes in), and the tin peddler (Auka helps him trade his old broken wagon wheel for a new one, and the peddler’s horse helps with… something, I forget).

Anyway, it is a delightful story. Kaeta pointed out that this would make a great Miyazaki movie, and she’s absolutely right. Add in a mystical Stork Witch or something, and it would be perfect.