Recommended for: Intermediate Years (4th-8th)

• Rascal Book Study with weekly lesson plans, recipes, and more
• Rascal Book Report Template
• Rascal Extension Book List
• Multimedia Reference Materials links
• Book Club Meet-up Guide

Overview of Rascal

Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era by Sterling North is a semi-autobiographical children’s book by Sterling North about his childhood in Wisconsin during the last year of World War I. The story chronicles the days of 11-year-old Sterling North, who captures and befriends a baby raccoon he names Rascal. Sterling and Rascal adventure together while the world around them is changing with industrialization on the horizon and World War I drawing to a close.

Rascal is a coming of age story intertwined with loss — loss of innocence, family, and friends. Sterling is forced to make many of life’s difficult choices alone as he grows into a young man. The book compares Sterling’s relationships with animals to the adults around him. Rascal was a 1964 Newbery Honor book, won the 1964 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and won the 1966 Sequoyah Book Award.

Themes covered in this study

• Raccoons
• Canoes
• Wisconsin Native American tribes
• The Black Hawk war
• Wisconsin native birds - whippoorwills
• Flora and fauna of Wisconsin/Lake Superior
• End of World War I and Armistice Day
• Lake Superior rocks and minerals - agates

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