Maurice Sendak

Alone in a sampan with his pig and three ducklings, a little Chinese boy is whirled down a raging river, back to the town from which he and his parents had escaped the invading Japanese, and spends long and frightening days regaining his family and new home.

Davie finds it almost unbelievable that he has a pet rabbit all his own, and he's devastated on the day he goes out to the barn and finds that Shadrach has slipped out of his hutch and disappeared.