Rabbit Hill, the story of a clutch of animals worried about the new family of farmers moving in on their turf, is so slight - the entire first half of the 120-page illustrated novel is animals running to each other and yelling "new folks coming!" - and so short and so weird that I'm baffled it won the Newbery one year after Johnny Tremain, the exhaustively researched work of a Pulitzer-winning historian trying to write the Great American Historical Novel for Children and mostly succeeding. But I must say this for Rabbit Hill: you will never, in a million years, predict the plot twist at the end. We'll get there.
Before we get there, though: there's a bit that John Mulaney does in one of his standup specials where he says something like "I grew up thinking that quicksand would be a much bigger problem in my adult life than it turned out to be". Which is funny, because if you remember being a kid and watching cartoons or reading comics or seeing adventure movies, yeah, quicksand did come up as a source of peril pretty often, more often than you needed to prepare yourself for a career as a Project Analyst in Lincoln Park. I would argue that there is another natural phenomenon that we were repeatedly warned about as children: skunks.
Skunks come up all of the time in children's media. Just looking at the books I have in the same room as me right now: here's a page of "You Must Never Touch A Porcupine":
"You must never touch a skunk,
That idea really stinks.
He'll spray his smelly scent before there's
Even time to think!"
Here's another passage from another of my daughter's books, It's Not Easy Being A Bunny. In this book, PJ Funnybunny has decided that he's sick of being a bunny and has tried signing on with the bears, birds, possums, beavers, pigs, and moose, but none of them are a good fit for various practical reasons. Then he tries the skunks:
And, of course, in Rabbit Hill, we are introduced to "Phewie the Skunk" - Phewie! - a perfectly nice animal at the farm who keeps getting interrupted mid-conversation so characters can say things like “I say, Phewie, you wouldn’t mind moving over a bit, would you, a little to the leeward? There, that’s fine. Thanks lots," or “Er - by the way, the breeze seems to have shifted - would you mind?”
The difference between quicksand and skunks, of course, is that quicksand isn't a realistic problem for most people in my part of the world and skunks are.
A skunk isn't really a big fighter - tiny claws, tiny teeth - and it moves relatively slowly, can't really run so much as waddle. How many natural predators does the skunk have? Zero. Zero predators. Every animal will go out of its way to avoid upsetting a skunk. You put a wolf in front of a skunk, it will immediately look for ways to get away from that skunk. You put a grizzly bear in front of that skunk, the grizzly bear will not touch that skunk. The skunk's natural defenses are unparalleled in the animal kingdom, not just in terms of effectiveness but also reputation.
What about humans? The smartest animal in history, can use tools, record history, create civilization, pay for parking, we're famously "the most dangerous game". I've seen skunks before, they do just fine in Midwestern suburbia. You know what I say when I see a skunk? "Oh shit oh shit it's a skunk hold still let's get out of here". If you've ever seen a skunk, my guess is that you've done exactly the same thing. While unassuming, it is a truly terrifying animal, because we all know how it defends itself, and we all know that we don't want to be on the other end of that defense.
One of the earliest written descriptions of a skunk came from a Jesuit explorer in the new world in 1634, and I am including it in its entirety because the first time I read it, I laughed so hard I cried.
"The other is a low animal, about the size of a little dog or cat. I mention it here, not on account of its excellence, but to make of it a symbol of sin. I have seen three or four of them. It has black fur, quite beautiful and shining; and has upon its back two perfectly white stripes, which join near the neck and tail, making an oval that adds greatly to their grace. The tail is bushy and well furnished with hair, like the tail of a Fox; it carries it curled back like that of a Squirrel. It is more white than black; and, at the first glance, you would say, especially when it walks, that it ought to be called Jupiter's little dog. But it is so stinking and casts so foul an odor, that it is unworthy of being called the dog of Pluto. No sewer ever smelled so bad. I would not have believed it if I had not smelled it myself. Your heart almost fails you when you approach the animal; two have been killed in our court, and several days afterward there was such a dreadful odor throughout our house that we could not endure it. I believe the sin smelled by Saint Catherine de Sienne must have had the same vile odor."
A symbol of sin! This was a priest colonizing the new world and ultimately bringing disease and servitude to indigenous people and he was like "holy shit the skunk is the most evil thing I have ever encountered."
To return to one of our frequent guest stars of this series, Cassie from Animorphs can morph a skunk. That's a key plot point in the ninth book of the series, where do-gooder environmentalist Cassie adopts a family of baby skunks by impersonating their mother after the mother skunk is inadvertently killed. She's amazed by the skunk's sense of calm as she takes on the morph and inherits skunk instincts. The skunk fears nothing, because nothing would dare threaten a skunk.
It's a sweet story, but all of these stories lead to an epic battle against the invading aliens, led by the shock troops of Hork-Bajir and the evil Visser Three. When Cassie is boxed in at the climactic moment, up against her heavily armed enemies, when all hope is lost, when she has time for one last desperate gambit, she doesn't go into her wolf morph or morph any other predators. Instead, she morphs the animal that has no predators at all, as "I got into position. The human me was scared. But the skunk me was perfectly calm. The skunk knew it had the ultimate weapon."
Is it the ultimate weapon? Is a skunk powerful enough to repel not only Earthly predators, but extraterrestrial ones? I'll let K.A. Applegate show us what happens to predators who don't know what a skunk is:
"<This is the best you could do, Andalite scum? > [Visser Three] laughed. < Such a terrifying beast you've morphed! > He laughed again. He laughed at the chubby, cat-sized black-and-white animal in the box. Laughed at the way I stood with my back to him, tail raised, looking over my shoulder.
A skunk can fire its scent with amazing accuracy up to about fourteen feet. The Visser was only six feet away.
< Kill it, > Visser Three ordered coldly. But I fired first.
A skunk can fire its scent in five to seven shots. I fired once and hit the Visser in the face. I fired again and hit the nearest Hork-Bajir on the left. Again and hit two human-Controllers. Again and again, all within about three seconds.
< Aaaarggghh! > "Oh, guh, guh, ohhhhh. Ohhhh!" "Herunt gahal! Stink! Arrrr!" The Visser staggered back, blinded and reeling from the mighty stench. The human-Controllers covered their mouths with their hands. Some even dropped their weapons.
The Hork-Bajir I was worried about. I didn't know if Hork-Bajir even had a sense of smell. Turns out they do. Turns out they have an excellent sense of smell. Too bad."
Overwhelmed by a stench unlike anything he's experienced anywhere in the galaxy, Visser Three surrenders and negotiates a hostage exchange, and the Animorphs live to fight another day. The skunk fears nothing. Rabbit Hill is a story about what a skunk, and his friends, are starting to fear.
The premise of Rabbit Hill is that a new family is moving into the farmhouse at the top of the hill, and all of the small furry animals don't know what to expect. They've had nasty, animal-hating families, families who have set traps, hunted rabbits for fun, sought revenge for thefts from the vegetable garden. So after 60 pages of "new folks coming!", we start getting some worry from the animals (although in this book, we never really get any, for lack of a better word, conflict). Things come to a head near the end of the book when baby rabbit Gregory gets hit by a car and taken inside the home where the other animals don't know if he's convalescing (which he is - the humans turn out to be kind, as we'll see in a minute), or being tortured by the humans (which is a weird thing to include in a 120-page illustrated novel for children). On the night before the big vegetable theft, the humans drag a mysterious shrouded monument out to the garden, finally pulling the curtain off and revealing it the next night:
“Willie’s voice was hushed and breathless. ‘Oh, Mole,’ he said. ‘Oh, Mole, it’s so beautiful. It’s him, Mole, it’s him - the Good Saint!’
‘Him - of Assisi?’ asked the Mole.
‘Yes, Mole, our Saint. The good St. Francis of Assisi - him that’s loved us and protected us Little Animals time out of mind - and, oh, Mole, it’s so beautiful! He’s all out of stone, Mole, and his face is so kind and so sad. He’s got a long robe on, old and poor like, you can see the patches on it.
‘And all around his feet are the Little Animals. They’re us, Mole, all out of stone. There’s you and me and there’s all the Birds and there’s Little Georgie and Porkie and the Fox - even old Lumpy the Hop Toad. And the Saint’s hands are held out in front of him sort of kind - like blessing things…And, oh, Mole, all around the pool is broad flat stones, a sort of rim, like a shelf or something, and it’s all set out with things to eat, like a banquet feast. And there’s letters, there’s words onto it, Mole, cut in the stones.
‘What does it say, Willie, the printing?’
‘Willie spelle it out slowly, carefully. ‘It says - ‘There - is - enough - for - all.’ There’s enough for all, Mole. And there is’.”
Yes, it's true, this is a real book that won the Newbery: the animals have nothing to worry about, because their family is Catholic. Saint Francis of Assisi was famous for his love of animals, and the family lays out vegetables at his feet all season for the animals to enjoy. There is enough for all. All except, I imagine, one animal who was first discovered by the Jesuits and remains, to this day, a horrifying symbol of sin.
Newburied is a series by Tony Ginocchio on the history of the Newbery Medal and a whole bunch of other stuff related to it. You can subscribe via Substack to get future installments sent to your inbox directly. The next installment will cover the 1952 medalist, Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes.