Search - Where the Red Fern Grows

I loved this book as a child, and loved reading it to my own children. The author takes us into a unknown Florida ecosystem, and puts us right inside the skin of a boy. I think we all cried, and all loved the book.

Well, everyone else here loved it as a child, so I am in the minority. I just read it for the first time, as an adult and the ending spoiled it for me.

SPOILER ALERT

I started reading this book to see if it would be a good one to read with a dog-loving foreign student in junior high, whom I am tutoring. At first it seemed like the perfect choice...but then I had a look at the last few chapters and changed my mind. Good "literature," it probably is, but there is a description of the killing of one of the boy's dogs that is downright gruesome. It could have been handled in a much less graphic way.

In my opinion, this book does not belong in the children's section of the library (its location in our local library). I dislike the modern penchant for having kids' stories end sadly, anyway, but I would not demand that every story end "happily ever after." Nevertheless, the graphic brutality in "Red Fern" is over the top.

Sure, kids nowadays are exposed to hundreds of gruesome killings, blowings-up, and so on, when they watch TV, and they may kill and blow people up themselves in video games, but there is a difference between animated games and a story that draws you in so that you identify with and suffer with the characters.

Anyone considering having his/her child read this book should check out the part about the dogs' deaths first and make a decision based on how their child might react to the story. I would keep it from mine as long as I could.

ISBN 0440412676 - Forced to read this book in 8th grade, a looong time ago, I did what most young teens would do - I read it, wrote the book report and forgot about it. Since then, I have returned over and over to read it again. Wouldn't my English teacher be thrilled? If you have, or ever had, a dog OR a heart, this book is bound to touch you. And while it IS a great kids' book, don't let that stop you from reading it as an adult. It's far too good to let the kids to keep it to themselves!

- AnnaLovesBooks