Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  Hell, damn and the term for a female dog (in reference to Little Ann, a female dog) are used.

Violence:  Billy is beat up by a gang of young boys in town as he collects his new dogs from the train depot.  A mountain lion prowls in front of the cave where Billy and his hound pups spend the night.  Billy traps a racoon and kills him with a double bit ax in order to obtain a skin to train his hounds.  Old Dan and Little Ann track and kill many racoons.  Rubin Pritchard picks a fight with Billy.  Rubin then becomes enraged when he sees that Old Dan is killing his hound, Old Blue.  Rubin grabs Billy’s ax and runs towards the dogs, to kill Old Dan and Little Ann.  Rubin trips, falls on the ax and bleeds to death.  The hounds track a mountain lion.  The lion tries to attack Billy.  Old Dan and Little Ann sacrifice themselves to save Billy’s life.  Old Dan is severely injured. He is disemboweled by the big cat.  Billy hacks the mountain lion with the ax. Old Dan and Little Ann’s jaws clamp down on the mountain lion’s throat.  They rip the jugular vein and kill the moutain lion.  Billy’s Mom cleans off Old Dan’s intestines and then stitches him closed.  Old Dan dies from the violent encounter.  Little Ann dies mourning the loss of Old Dan.

Synopsis

Billy is a ten year old boy who lives on a farm in the Ozarks.  Billy finds a magazine discarded by fishermen.  In the magazine he discovers an advertisement for red coon hound pups.  He works hard to save money for two years to purchase the pups.  Unbeknownst to Billy’s parents, Billy’s grandpa orders the dogs for Billy.  Billy is so excited to get the dogs.  He walks all the way to town, thirty miles each way to collect the dogs from the train depot.  Billy camps in a cave on the way home and encounters a mountain lion.  The fire and the hounds protect Billy from the mountain lion.   Billy trains his pups to hunt racoons.  Old Dan and Little Ann outhunt everyone around.  Billy, Old Dan and Little Ann become an inseparable three-some.  Their love for one another is unconditional.  Grandpa is goaded into a bet with Rubin and Rainie Pritchard, which ends poorly.  Rubin falls while running with Billy’s ax and he bleeds to death.   Grandpa registers Billy, Old Dan and Little Ann in a championship coon hunt.  Little Ann wins the “Best-Looking Hound” contest and Billy receives a silver cup.  Billy, Old Dan and Little Ann win the Coon Championship Hunt and Billy receives a gold cup and three hundred dollars that was collected from the hunt’s participants.  Mama feels that her prayers have been answered, because the family can now afford to move to town and her children may receive an education.  Old Dan and Little Ann track a mountain lion.  A violent fight ensues.  Old Dan sacrifices himself to save Billy.  Old Dan dies.  Little Ann dies mourning.  Billy buries both dogs on a scenic overlook.  When Spring arrives Billy finds that a beautiful red fern has grown between the two graves.  Indian legend states that “only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never die; where one grew, that spot was sacred.”

How can I read and review youth literature and not include this perennial favorite?  This book is the first memory I have of my mother reading aloud to us, her children.  The six of us, (out of eight), lay on the threshold of our bedrooms and listened to my mother read as she leaned up against the wall in the hallway.  I loved the story of Billy, a ten year old boy’s adventure and the unconditional love Old Dan, Little Ann and Billy all had for one another.  I recall my great sorrow when she read of Old Dan and Little Ann’s deaths.  I also remember crying when she told us that Wilson Rawls, embarrassed by his lack of education, burned a trunk full of manuscripts he had written.  I cried over the loss of such great stories.  “Where the Red Fern Grows” is with few exceptions, an autobiographical tale of Rawl’s childhood in Scraper, Oklahoma.

My children received this book for Christmas.  We began reading aloud and I wasn’t sure it would have the same effect upon my children as it had on me.  I was wrong.  Night after night, my daughter would beg for just one more chapter.  She also claimed she couldn’t sleep, because she just couldn’t stop thinking about getting a dog.  (We are dogless.)  They were so sad when Old Dan and Little Ann died, but they loved the story!  If you haven’t yet read this to your children – what are you waiting for?

©2009 The Literate Mother