to give child a growing up exercise' as a Message. But then I never did accept 'author kills pet/the parents/etc. Let's just say they're worse than Old Yeller for having no reasoning or message in the animal deaths. I'm specifically not stating the names of them (neither are well known). Those stories did nothing but upset me, and as an adult they still annoy the hell out of me. (Authors do have that power, after all.) Tragedy where the author kills off the beloved character rather than use alternate means (you know, the old suffering and making it through) - well I always feel that's a cheap shot. I didn't give a rip if the human lived - I much preferred that the animal not die. But then you had others that masqueraded as a caring story and instead were all about Tragic Thing Happens to Animals. Animal stories were usually teaching an Important Moral Lesson or going for comedy. The children's books with animals in them that I grew up reading in the 1970s were a weird mix - I read enough of the older books and the more modern ones, and oddly it's the more modern ones that were often the problem.

My memory of the book has to do with my Fear Of Animals Getting Hurt In Books - which is really thanks to other books, not Lawson's. Rabbit Hill (1944) was somewhat popular at our library, but then it was also a Newbery Award winner, and those usually were put on display during certain times of year. I don't remember reading it - though I do remember looking at the illustrations.

I'm betting that it was suggested reading for American History book reports.

The really popular book of Lawson's (when kid-me was reading at the school library anyway) was Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin By His Good Mouse Amos (which does not have its own wikipedia page, instead you only have this one for the 1953 Disney film). Urn:oclc:872364555 Scandate 20100130063128 Scanner may immediately recognize - if not the name Robert Lawson - then the style of illustration (images below). OL4234959W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 88.99 Pages 140 Ppi 400 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0881037532 Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 18:02:54 Boxid IA111607 Boxid_2 CH111101 Camera Canon 5D City Harmondsworth DonorĪlibris Edition reprinted.

Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson