Rawls, Wilson. Where the Red Fern Grows. New York: The Curtis Publishing Company, 1961. 249. (Realistic Fiction)
Billy wants two coon dogs more than just about anything in the world, but a good coon dog costs money and that is something Billy’s family just doesn’t have. Billy mopes around for quite a while knowing that he most likely won’t get his dogs when he finds a discarded hunting magazine with an ad for registered coon dogs. The problem is that the dogs cost twenty-five dollars each. Billy decides that two dogs is worth however long it takes to collect the money, so he cleans out “an old K. C. Baking Powder can” and gets busy trapping the Ozark Mountains where he lives, picking berries and doing just about anything he can to fill his new bank. Even after he gets the dogs there’s still the training to be done. What adventures will Little Ann, Old Dan and Billy get into when the training is over?
This is an amazing story about a boy, his dogs, and their love for each other told through their adventures together and their team work when the trail gets hard. I would definitely read more books by Wilson Rawls because I found this novel to be a very good story that was very well written.
