![]() ![]() ![]() When Rascal sneaks away at night to raid a nearby cornfield, it arouses the ire of the local farmers and Sterling and his father have to build a pen around the tree where Rascal sleeps and keep him caged, much to Rascal's dismay. Sterling's mother dies not long after Rascal has entered the household and Rascal's affectionate attention helps him get through his grief. We see Sterling rescue Rascal after its mother is killed by a hunter and watch as he nurtures Rascal and gets him acclimated to life in a rural household in Wisconsin in the 1910s. The dialogue scenes were often a problem to follow, especially when they ended with the characters crying, but there are lots of scenes with Rascal, the raccoon, and Sterling, his pre-adolescent owner, and their antics together. For this review, I watched a 92-minute compilation of key sequences from the series, edited into a two-part TV special. ![]() The book had been previously made into a live-action film by the Walt Disney Studio in 1969 and starred Steve Forrest and Billy Mumy. It was based on Sterling North's "Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era," an account published in 1964 of the author's childhood in Wisconsin and his relationship with a raccoon he'd rescued when it was a baby and raised as a pet. "Rascal the Racoon" was the 1977 entry in Japan's long-running World Masterpiece Theater, a series of animated adaptations of western literary works. ![]()
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