Where the Red Fern Grows

I was in elementary school the first time I read the book Where the Red Fern Grows. I chose to read it over again for one of the outside reading assignments. The basic storyline of the book is about a boy, Billy, who has “dog fever”. He saves all his money until he finally has enough and buys two hound dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann, to go hunting with. Billy and the dogs are unseperable throughout the entire book. He loved his dogs more than anything else in the world. They did everything from hunting coons to playing in the woods together. In the end, Old Dan was injured while saving Billy from a bobcat. This injury resulted in his death. Little Ann died shortly after. Billy buried the two together and there grew a red fern, hence the name of the book. In class we talked about how authors sometimes use animals to describe human behavior. I think that Wilson Rawls used the dogs to help introduce the concept of death to children in a gentle way. It is never easy for a parent to explain death to children so by reading this book, the child can learn about losing something, or someone, you love and how to cope.