Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
by William Steig
Summary
Sylvester Duncan, a young donkey who collects unusual pebbles, finds a shining red one on Strawberry Hill and discovers, in a moment of pure luck, that it grants wishes; testing it out, he wishes the rain to stop and watches it happen at once. Walking home with his new pebble, Sylvester runs straight into a hungry lion, and in his panic he wishes himself into a rock instead of wishing the lion away, a choice that saves him from being eaten but leaves him trapped, since the pebble has to actually touch him to work and it has fallen uselessly to the ground beside a rock that used to be a donkey. Sylvester spends a frightened, lonely stretch of the book unable to move or speak, watching the seasons pass over him while his parents search everywhere without finding him. Months later, when the seasons have turned, Sylvester's parents happen to have a picnic on the very rock he has become, and when his father idly picks up a shining red pebble lying nearby and sets it on the rock to admire it, Sylvester manages one last silent wish, to be himself again, and the family is reunited on the spot, deciding afterward to lock the pebble away rather than risk using it again.
Steig, who spent nearly four decades as one of the New Yorker's most prolific cartoonists before turning to children's books at sixty one, illustrates the story in loose, expressive watercolor and ink, keeping Sylvester's rock form visually plain against lush green hillsides so a young reader can track exactly where in the landscape he is trapped. It suits children roughly four to eight, and the long stretch of Sylvester's separation from his parents, real and sad rather than played for comedy, tends to affect younger listeners more than the book's gentle ending fully resolves.
Historical Context & Significance
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, published by Windmill Books and Simon & Schuster on September 24, 1969, won the 1970 Caldecott Medal, the only Caldecott Steig would win, though he later collected two Newbery Honor citations of his own, for Abel's Island in 1977 and Doctor De Soto in 1983, the latter also winning the National Book Award that same year.
The book's depiction of police officers as pigs drew organized objection from the International Conference of Police Associations, whose complaints led several public schools and libraries to pull it from their shelves for a time. That year's Honor books were Ezra Jack Keats's Goggles!, Leo Lionni's Alexander and the Wind Up Mouse, Robert Andrew Parker's Pop Corn and Ma Goodness, Brinton Turkle's Thy Friend, Obadiah and Margot Zemach's The Judge. Steig had begun writing for children only at the urging of fellow cartoonist Robert Kraus, publishing more than thirty children's books over his remaining decades and publishing Shrek! in 1990, when he was eighty three.