The Wheel on the School
by Meindert De Jong, Maurice Sendak (Illustrator)
Lina is the only girl at the village school. She starts asking why storks don’t come to nest in their seaside village, and all the other schoolchildren begin to wonder why as well. They notice that other villages have old wheels on their roofs, so that the storks have a place to build their nests. They start asking around to see if they can find an old wheel to put on the roof of the schoolhouse, but it’s more difficult than they imagined to get a wheel. Most wheels are being used on wagons, not sitting around to be bird nests. As the obstacles against them continue to grow, the children refuse to give up, and soon the whole village is helping them, hoping to attract the good luck that storks bring with them.
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