The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

Nils Holgersson is a terrible boy. Fourteen years old, lazy, cruel to animals, and more interested in mischief than anything else. Then he meets an elf in his own home, and everything changes. Transformed into a creature no larger than a thumb, Nils must find a way to reverse the spell by earning the trust of the wild creatures he once tormented. What follows is a journey across the entire breadth of Sweden, seen from the back of a flying goose. Nils witnesses the changing of the seasons, the hidden wars between crow colonies, the ancient migrations of the north. He argues with rats, befriends a venerable goose matriarch, and discovers that the world is far older and stranger than his small life ever allowed him to see. Written by the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, this is a book that understands how children actually learn compassion: not through being told to be kind, but through being forced to see from a lower height.