I remember the story of Fredrick. It was a story written and illustrated by Leo Lionni in 1967. An absolute masterpiece! Here's a link to a page about it... and if you click on "transcripts and audio", you'll find a nice critique of the book -- and there's a link where you can buy it from one of your local independant bookstores ;-).

Frederick's Fables is an anthology of some of Lionni's work, and Bruno Bettlehiem wrote the introduction to the 1985 edition (there's also a 1998 edition, where Lionni wrote his own introduction...