Orphan: The Story of a Baby Woodchuck

by Faith McNulty, Darby Morrell (Illustrator)

One spring day, Faith McNulty—who shares her farm with deer, rabbits, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, possums, and many other animals—finds a dead woodchuck among some leaves. Not far away, a baby woodchuck hurries along the driveway. He is hungry. He is helpless.

Faith adopts the orphan woodchuck. She makes him a bed of cat litter and hay in a cardboard box and feeds him cereal and milk from a medicine dropper.

With the passing of time, the author falls in love with her young charge. His homely face and chunky body become beautiful to her.

Faith McNulty's relationship with her orphan woodchuck gives us insights into the animal world—and the human world. We learn about the joy of bonding, as a result of the author feeding and holding her charge five or six times a day, and the sorrow of loss, when it becomes time for Chuck to go out into the world on his own.

This sensitive story, beautifully illustrated by Darby Morrell, dramatizes the wonder and pathos of a very special relationship.

40 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Faith McNulty was an American nonfiction author, probably best-known for her 1980 book The Burning Bed. She was born "Faith Corrigan" in New York City, the daughter of a judge. Young Faith attended Barnard College for one year, then attended Rhode Island State College. But she dropped out of college once she got a job as a copy girl at the New York Daily News. She later went to work for Life magazine. She worked for the U.S. Office of War Information in London during World War II.

McNulty was a wildlife writer at The New Yorker magazine for several years. In 1980, a collection of her New Yorker work was published as The Wildlife Stories of Faith McNulty. For many years, she edited the annual New Yorker compilation of the year's best children's books.

She also frequently wrote children's books on wildlife, including How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World in 1979 and When I Lived with Bats in 1998. Her 1966 book The Whooping Crane: The Bird that Defies Distinction was written for adults.

Her husband, John McNulty, was also a writer for The New Yorker and with Thomas Wolf, Truman Capote, and Gay Talese, a major figure in the development of the literary genre of creative nonfiction, which is also known as literary journalism or literature in fact. After her husband died in 1956, she remarried, to Richard Martin, a set designer and an inventive designer of set props.

The Burning Bed told the true story of Francine Hughes, who set fire to the bedroom in which her husband was sleeping. Hughes defended herself by saying that her husband had been abusing her for 13 years. The jury at her trial ruled that she had been temporarily insane, and she was found not guilty.

"I can remember my father in his nightshirt, digging for worms for the baby robin in the bathroom. That's the kind of household it was; I had woodchucks in the bathroom, cats, squirrels, chipmunks," McNulty once said.

Toward the end of her life, she wrote a weekly column for The Providence Journal on a local animal shelter run by the Animal Welfare League. Her mother had founded the Animal Welfare League in southern Rhode Island. McNulty had long been known for taking in stray animals at her farm.

She suffered a stroke in 2004. She died at her farm in Wakefield, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Rosanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beginning chapter book with a few illustrations. I enjoyed the story because the woman in it handles the situation the best that she knows how and does further research when she needs more answers. I would have liked reading this as a fourth grader.

[Oxalis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute, brief story about a woman who rescues an orphaned woodchuck and helps raise it. The black-and-white illustrations are fantastic. Recommended for kids who love animals.

[Michelle]

Listed as Q4 = Exceptional!, P3 = A booktalk on this title will excite most people’s interest