The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong

The Wheel on the School offers a simple message-when you start to wonder about the whys, it might just be the beginning to make things happen.Meindert DeJong (1906–1991) was a Dutch born American author of children’s literature and winner of the Hans Christian Andersen award for his contributions to the field in 1962, besides several other prizes and nominations. I don’t want to give you too much information, but the story is charming, delightful, suspenseful, funny, and touching. In their search for a wheel, the children encounter incidents after incidents (some good, and some make you go “oh no!”), and meet people who they would never have talked to before, like Janus and old Douwa. Lastly, and most importantly, is T ake Actions. You, and the children, must ask yourselves – How / Where will I find a wheel? So y ou have narrowed down the solution, now what? Well, you must Plan. To fix the situation, they need to find a wheel and put it on top of a roof. Wheel it is! The children and their teacher conclude that their roofs in Shora are too pointy for storks to build their nests. What do storks need? trees? river? or wheel? This is the advice Grandmother Sibble tells Lina, stating that “in order to figure out what a stork would want, we should try to think the way a stork would think.” Why don’t the storks come to Shora? They did before, but why not now?īy Meindert DeJong & Pictures by Maurice SendaThe Wheel on the School Okay, so we’ve taken care of the first step, curiosity, then what? Like Lina, all her classmates (the teacher included) are now curious about storks and why they do not come to Shora. That is all Lina knows about storks because storks never come to Shora to build their nests.

They make a noise like you do when you clap your hands when you feel happy and good. But when they build a nest on the roof of a house, they bring good luck to that house and to the whole village that the house stands in. They build great big messy nests, sometimes right on your roof. I know this about storks they are big and white and have long yellow bills and tall yellow legs. Now, the story does not begin with Lina because she is the only girl, but because she writes a composition on storks:ĭo you know about storks? Storks on your roof bring all kinds of good luck. Our story, which takes place in a little Dutch fishing village of Shora, begins with Lina, the only girl in the little Shora school (with five boys, and one man teacher). Curiosity is the beginning of a great many things. If you are wondering “why,” then congratulations, you are starting at a very good place-be curious, ask questions.

Why would you want to put a wheel on top of the school?

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong