The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall

The Minnipins have stuck in my mind since I first read this book in the fourth grade. If I had to pick a moral, it might be “The power of being yourself.” The world is quite fantastic and yet it is a distorted view of the very neighborhood you live in. The Minnipins are content in their valley, oblivious to the outside world that once threatened them and the dangers that they once faced. There are a few citizens though who choose to be different, they are outcast, but in the end the strength of their little town is in their difference. Sometimes it the right choice is not the acceptable or the obvious.

Newbery Honor 1960