The Newbery Award winner for 1955, which I haven’t read since the 1960s, and I’d forgotten how good it is.

Shora is a fishing village on the coast of Holland much like other villages, but with one difference. Other villages have storks nesting on their houses and buildings, nesting on wagon wheels put there for just that reason. Nesting storks are considered good luck, and good company. There are just six school-age children in Shora, five boys and a girl. The girl, Lina, wonders why they have no storks, and asks her teacher, who makes it an assignment for all the students to find out why. Lina learns that many years ago there were storks nesting in Shora, but then there were trees for them to rest on and get shade from, and now there are none. That’s one reason. Another is that there are no wagon wheels on which to make a nest. The teacher’s next assignment is for the students to find a wagon wheel. That leads to many unusual and at times exciting adventures, and even dangerous ones. A wheel is found in the hay loft of a barn by one student, but getting it down nearly causes him to fall out of the loft, and the wheel shatters. Lina finds out about a wheel that’s inside an overturned boat out in the ocean near the town dyke, and she and the boat’s owner, a very old man, come up with a perilous plan to retrieve it that gets many of the townspeople involved. Later, they are also involved in rescuing a pair of storks who have become trapped out there on a treacherously soft sand bar. Can they rescue the storks, and will those storks nest on their wagon wheel on the school?

Wonderful storytelling and characters, recommended. Though I like Sendak’s work generally, I didn’t think his illustrations here added much to the story.