Rascal (book)
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Rascal is a beloved 1963 children's book by Sterling North about his childhood in Wisconsin.
Rascal was published in 1963. The book is a remembrance of a year in his childhood when he had a pet raccoon named Rascal. It received a Newbery Honor in 1964, the Young Reader's Choice Award in 1966, and the Sequoyah Book Award in 1966. It was made into the Disney movie Rascal in 1969. Additionally, it was made into a 52-episode Japanese anime entitled Araiguma Rasukaru.
Subtitled "a memoir of a better era," North's book is a prose poem to adolescent angst. Rascal chronicles young Sterling's loving, troubled relationship with his father, dreamer David Willard North, and the aching loss represented by the death of his mother, Elizabeth Nelson North. The boy reconnects with society through the unlikely intervention of his pet raccoon, a "ringtailed wonder" charmer that dominates almost every page.
The book is filled with humorous moments. His sister Theo cannot understand their building of a canoe in the living room and is "startled nearly out of her wits" when Rascal, who had been lying on and blending into Uncle Justus' Amazonian jaguar rug, stands up. Later in the book, Rascal joins him in a pie eating, and they win, but are disqualified, although they do end up with the consolation prize. Rascal also enjoyed riding in his bicycle's basket, and helped him sell magazines by creating an animated sideshow.
The book also has serious moments. The author's brother Herschel is serving in the military during World War I, and the author longs for word from him. Rascal is confined after he bites an annoying lad who snaps him with a rubberband. Later, Sterling catches a mild case of the Spanish flu during the epidemic.
The author's sister, the strait-laced poet and art historian Jessica Nelson North, is one note of early 1900s normalcy in the book. She wasn't particularly pleased with how her brother portrayed her family in Rascal (yet was proud of her brother's achievement, regardless).
The setting of the book, their childhood home in Edgerton, Wisconsin (known as Brailsford Junction in the book), is preserved as a museum.
The author's daughter, Arielle North Olson, became a respected children's author in her own right.
