Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
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Book Summary Author: Wilson Rawls Brand: Yearling Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 1996-09-01 ISBN: 0440412676 Number of pages: 208 Publisher: Yearling Product features:
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Book Reviews of the Where the Red Fern Grows
Customer Review: As Exiting and Strange as Frozen Asparagus
Summary: 1 Stars
I've never seen anything like this. It is an utterly pointless book. There is no character development. The characters are completely flat. Billy, the main character, kills raccoon after raccoon and skins them himself. I'm no animal-rights activist, but it's simply unrealistic that a sensitive thirteen-year-old boy would not have second thoughts once. In this way he is too insensitive to be believable, but then he is also too sensitive to be believable. This book was just a little too tragic. In every chapter there is some tragedy. If you don't believe me:
(WARNING: this might spoil the book)
In chapter 1, Billy watches a terrible dog fight, and then he saves the dog and later cries over the fact that he has to release him.
In chapter 2, Billy tries to run away, he stops sleeping and eating, and he complains that the sound of hounds is slowly killing him.
In chapter 3, Billy is forced to work for two years at the most grueling labor because his parents are too poor to buy him dogs. His feet become giant scabs as he scrambles through blackberry brambles.
In chapter 4, Billy walks all night barefoot 30 or 40 miles to pick up his dogs. When he gets there, he sees himself in a mirror for the first time and realizes that he is ugly. Other children make fun of him for being poor and living in the country.
In chapter 5, Billy picks up his dogs. Children of the town abuse the dogs and beat him up. Then he camps with his dogs in an abandoned robber's cave in the mountains. In the middle of the night a mountain lion threatens to attack him and his puppies.
In chapter 6, Billy weeps as he tells his mother he just had to disappear and walk thirty miles barefoot and almost get killed by a mountain lion without telling her. He is told they will move to the town he was just beaten up in when they save enough money.
In chapter 7, Billy catches his first coon by snagging its paw on sharp, angled nails.
In chapter 8, he is forced to spend a full night and morning chopping at a hopelessly large tree without food or drink, because if he doesn't he thinks his dogs will never trust him again.
In chapter 9, Billy gives up about a million times, (each one is very emotional) but finally gets the tree cut down. His loyal dogs spend the night in the wilderness guarding a tree to make sure that a treed coon who is slowly starving to death and doesn't come down.
In chapter 10, Billy kills so many raccoons that their skins cover the side of his smoke house. His dog falls into an underground and gets stuck in a tree.
In chapter 11, Billy's dog is almost dies in a half frozen river. He is also almost frozen to death as he tries to save her. He spends much of the night trying to revive his frozen friend.
In chapter 12, Billy is forced into a bet with the meanest people in town.
In chapter 13, Billy wins the bet, but the bad guys take his money and threaten to kill him if he says anything about it. Then they beat him up just for the fun of it while their dog rips his to pieces. However, his dogs eventually get the upper hand, so one of the bad guys steals his ax, planning to murder his dogs. He falls on his ax, though, and Billy watches as he dies slowly and a bubble of blood comes out of his mouth.
And it goes on and on like this. I'm not sure weather it's supposed to make you interested, or make you cry, or what, but I just found it a little uncanny that so many bad things could happen to this one average little boy.