The Wheel on the School, Part II

God, as they say, helps those who help themselves.

And God, as He says, commands His children to treat their neighbors as themselves.

And if your tiny Dutch seaside village is so tiny even the storks don't stop there, you figure out straight away hoe to get them to stop to bring the good luck storks are famed for in The Netherlands.

The six schoolchildren in Shora work mightily to bring the storks in Meindert DeJong's delightful book "The Wheel on the School," which won the Newbery Medal in 1957, deservedly so. The children and their teacher decide Shora needs wagon wheels on their steep roofs -- traditional Dutch habitat for storks, apparently -- to get the storks to stop by, build a nest, and return the next year. The kids spend days combing their village and the farms that surround it for wheels, all the while looking for wheels in unexpected places. They find stealing wheels doesn't work all that much, but befriending the elderly population in the village -- about all that's left, what with the fathers out to sea and the mothers looking after those too young for school -- helps them find wheels where they might never find them.

First to find help is Lina, who becomes friends with Grandmother Sibble III, who tells them Shora used to have storks, and that to get storks they need to find the wagon wheels.

The boys find help in the unlikely shape of Grandfather Douwa, who never strays far with his cane, and Janus, the old crank in the wheelchair who had his fishermans' legs bitten off by sharks. The children quickly discover the old relics in town are more full of knowledge, resourcefulness, and pepper than they ever thought possible.

So it is with God's children. We never know what's in those we encounter until we take the time to remove any preconceived labels or notions and see them for who they are. And despite what we think, the vast, vast majority of people we could meet are pretty interesting and valuable, no matter what our brains or others might have us think.

That's what the folks in Shora found out. We ought to as well.