The Great Wheel Format: Paperback

Newbery Honor book

"Your fortune lies to the west. Keep your face to the sunset . . . and one day you'll ride the greatest wheel in all the world."

When Aunt Honora reads this fortune in his tea leaves, Conn Kilroy knows he is destined for greater things than his small Irish village can offer. A letter from his uncle Michael in America offering Conn a partnership in his New York contracting company sets Conn on his western adventure. Just a few short months later Conn's Uncle Patrick lures him even farther west to Chicago, where they join the hardworking crew building what some called Ferris's Folly-the first Ferris wheel-then the largest wheel in the world and the showpiece of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Robert Lawson worked as a commercial artist before turning to the world of children's books. He began his career as an illustrator but soon became a writer as well. He was awarded the Caldecott Medal for They Were Strong and Good in 1941, and in 1945 he was awarded the Newbery Medal for Rabbit Hill. The Great Wheel was Mr. Lawson's last book. He died in 1957.

Richard Peck is the author of the Newbery Medal Winner A Year Down Yonder, as well as Fair Weather, a novel of the 1893 World's Columbian Expostion.