![]() Rascal is only a baby when Sterling brings him home, but soon the two are best friends, doing everything together-until the spring day when everything suddenly changes. Rascal is quite fetching, though the emotional climate he lives in is a little groggy at times. A Newbery Honor Book Celebrating 50 years of a beloved classic Nothing's surprising in the North household, not even Sterling's new pet raccoon. Rascal gives a mating call and cuts out after a coon who has answered. Eventually, Rascal weighs 13 pounds, which is too much raccoon for the skittish new housekeeper, and Sterling takes Rascal far downstream and leaves him. When they return, Sterling has to give in, buy a collar and leash for Rascal and build a pen for him to stay in while Sterling is at school. During an interlude, Sterling and his father take Rascal on a two-week camping trip. He steals off at night to drain the sugar from ears of neighbors' sweet corn, and develops some vandal habits. Living in a cabin in the southern Wisconsin woods with his father (his mother is dead, sisters married), Sterling-and Wowser-capture a one-pound infant raccoon in the summer of 1918. Sterling, 11, and his father (who lived to be 99) also have a bony reality that does much to keep Rascal's story from collapsing like a vanilla cone on July 4th. ![]() Yet, Rascal becomes an engaging character among characters such as Poe-the-Crow and Wowser the 170-pound St. ![]() Adults will not be as likely to eat the whole panful as may younger readers. ![]() North's childhood memoir about his pet raccoon Rascal mixes sentiment, nostalgia and treacle in about equal overdoses. ![]()
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