Wee Gillis

Wee Gillis is a boy in Scotland whose family is split between two ways of life. Each year he spends half his time with his mother's people in the Lowlands, where he learns to call the long-haired cattle home through the mist until his lungs grow strong, and half with his father's people in the Highlands, where he learns to hold his breath for a very long time while stalking stags. When he is old enough, both sides insist that he choose where he belongs. Then he meets a bagpiper with an enormous set of pipes that no one has the breath to play, and Wee Gillis finds a way to use everything he has learned. Munro Leaf's gentle, funny story is illustrated with Robert Lawson's detailed black-and-white drawings, and the book was a 1939 Caldecott Honor book.