Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era, by Sterling North

In Rascal, Sterling North tells the story of one year in his childhood.  In 1918, Sterling lives alone with his father, a widower.  His two older sisters are living their own lives elsewhere, and his older brother is overseas fighting in the war.  But apart from this, the war seems to have very little impact on his childhood.

Sterling and his father, both avid outdoorsmen, live an ideal bachelor's life.  Sterling is in the process of assembling a canoe their home's living room.  The two men cook to suit themselves.  And when his father, an attorney, is not working, the two often take extended wilderness trips.  Sterling also has a number of animals as pets, including a Saint Bernard and a tamed crow.  But what makes this year special is the addition of a raccoon kitten, named Rascal, to his herd.

Captured as a very young kit, Rascal relies on Sterling for his care in every regard.  And in return, Sterling is rewarded by seeing how Rascal develops and learns. The two are inseparable, and Rascal even shares Sterling's bed and food.  But over the course of the Summer, Rascal develops into more and more of a raccoon as well, stealing shiny objects (sometimes valuable ones) and raiding corn from the gardens of irate neighbors.  Eventually, in order to keep Rascal, Sterling is required to leash him when out, and cage him the rest of the time.

Rascal isn't the only one who is developing.  Sterling is becoming more a part of his community, learning, and growing himself.  An avid reader, he also has a talent for writing.  In the Spring, about a year after Rascal became his companion, Sterling has grown enough to understand that Rascal needs to live his own life as an independent creature, and returns him to the wild to seek his own fortune.  And encouraged by dear family, he knows that one day he'll record all of his memories of that year so others will experience them, too.

Great coming-of-age book.  Growing up "in the woods" myself, I'm surprised that his book wasn't in the curriculum.

It's Like This, Cat, by Emily Neville

This is a coming-of-age book, but less dramatic than many in that category. It feels like a walk on a long summer day with the main character, Dave, even though the book actually spans a considerable amount of time.

Dave is 14 at the start of the book, and lives in a Manhattan apartment with his lawyer father and stay-at-home mom. His life consists of a friend or two from school, riding bikes, exploring Coney Island, and an elderly neighbor named Kate, who takes in stray cats. Like any 14-year-old boy, he and his father have their conflicts, and he's angry when his best friend is more interested in girls than in hanging out the way they always used to. At the beginning of the book, we learn how Dave acquires "Cat", a stray tom that Kate needed to find a home for. We watch as Cat subtly causes events in which Dave meets several new and interesting people, including Tom, a slightly older boy, who is alone in New York and gets into a little trouble - not too much - and Mary, a girl from Coney Island, who he finds he likes better than most girls. As his family helps Tom get his life on track, and helps Kate when her life changes dramatically one day, Dave realizes that his own life is looking better too.

The language that probably made this book current and interesting when it was published makes it age the least well of all that I've read for this project; it's chock full of early 60s slang that didn't last. I recognized a "duck tail" and "butch" haircut when I pulled up a google image search, but had no idea when I read them. When Dave spends a day or two of his summer vacation painting the kitchen for his mother, he calls it "getting public-spirited at home", and he's always talking about "being sore" with people. But while it takes you back in time linguistically in a distracting way, the book is also a great look at New York City and what it might have been like to be a (reasonably well-to-do) kid there during that time. He talks about seeing West Side Story when it was new and current, and takes the city's cultural diversity for granted in a way that was delightful to this reader. The adventure Dave has within a bike-ride from home would have been fascinating to me when I was in the target audience, as my summer vacations were dominated by bike-riding too, with more limited destinations. But I also happily read flea-market Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames books from the 40s and 50s at the time; I'm not sure how well this book would translate for most of today's kids.