Some children’s books are classics.  Take Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand (Robert Lawson, illustrator).  Originally published in 1936 by Viking, Ferdinand tells the story of a gentle, little bull who doesn’t want to butt and stick his horns around.  Ferdinand wants to “sit just quietly under the cork tree and smell the flowers.” 

But when Ferdinand sits on a bee and gets stung, Ferdinand gets picked to fight in the bullfight in Madrid.  Will Ferdinand fight?

Ferdinand is a charmer–from his hulking adult body rippling with muscles to his scared little face peeking around the doorway of the bull ring to his beatific bovine body plopped down in the center of the bullring completely content to just sit and smell the flowers from all the lovely ladies.  (The picture of the lovely ladies with flowers in their hair was always my favorite when I was a girl.) 

It’s interesting to consider that this book was written when Hitler was butting and sticking his horns around plenty.  At the time of its publication, The Story of Ferdinand was banned in Spain and burned as propoganda by Nazi Germany.  

But the world would be a better place if people were more like Ferdinand and his mother.  Ferdinand doesn’t fall for the peer pressure of the other little bulls.  His mother perfectly understands when to gently pressure and when to back off and let her child make his own decision.  Face it, sometimes animals are much better people than people.  Just ask Charlotte and Wilbur.