The Story of Connie Chipmunk

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

All of Ruth Lafortune’s stories are drawn from her upbringing on an
Ontario farm in the 1930s. Being born near a barn hasn’t harmed her
writing abilities. Lafortune is a born storyteller and has no trouble
holding a reader’s attention.

In An Adventure for Sugar Sparrow, Sugar is a baby sparrow who is born
in a nest just outside the bedroom window of David and Lisa. The two
human children learn lessons about life by observing the adventures of
Sugar Sparrow and her siblings Cinnamon and Nutmeg.

In The Story of Connie Chipmunk, the same two children learn more about
life by watching a pair of chipmunks raise their young in a woodpile
near the family home.

Corby’s Adventure is about a young raccoon who ends up in a lot of
trouble after he disobeys his mother’s instructions to stay away from
a nearby campground where humans are always present.

Cleopatra Pony is about a young girl named Sue who desperately wants
pony of her own. When a foal is born on a neighboring farm, Sue becomes
such a fixture at her neighbor’s barn that her parents finally get the
idea.

In Caramel Pig, Caramel is too small and dainty to fight for food with
the rest of her siblings. She is brought into a human house and adopted
by a girl named Sue who nurses her back to health and proper size.
Eventually, Caramel is returned to the barn, but now she is big enough
to survive the rough and tumble life in a pigsty.

In Claudine Calf, young Sue and her brother David attempt to make a pet
out of Claudine, a newborn heifer. But as the young calf grows larger
and older and stops being cute, the siblings learn that some animals are
not meant to be pets.

All of Lafortune’s tales reflect a farmer’s pragmatic harmony with
animals. Some of her furry characters are even reminiscent of Beatrix
Potter’s Peter Rabbit tales.

Diane Van Rens’s black-and-white line drawings for Cleopatra Pony,
Connie Chipmunk, and Corby’s Adventure have an amateurish quality
about them. But Darryl Brown’s illustrations in the other three books
are well done and often add their own humorous element to Lafortune’s
story line.

Ruth Lafortune has published 12 books in this series; it is hoped that
the well has not yet run dry. Recommended.