Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates

First published in 1865, "Hans Brinker" is a beautiful children's story about a hard-working, honorable Dutch boy who faces serious challenges in his family's poverty. While he greatly desires to enter a big ice-skating race with his sister Gretel, Hans is much more concerned about his father, a man injured from a fall off of a dike and in need of surgery. When Hans learns of a very brusque, expensive doctor who may be able to treat his father, he offers his money, saved for race skates, to...