Where the Red Fern Grows

Purchased for teens ELA class. Great read we cried and laughed at times .

Read it as a kid and bought it for grandson. Great book

This classic book allows you to learn about honest, hard working, and honest to goodness love. The way Wilson writes is like few other authors, and I have never truly cared about two animals more in my life. Full of adventure, sadness, and love, this almost alive book will show everyone what caring means.

I personally have never read this book. Not sure how that happened, but I’ll chalk it up to fate intervening. However, my oldest son has recently read it and written up his first book report, which he would like to share on here for other kids considering picking this up.Be forewarned that there are spoilers throughout this review, because my son was writing a book report, so if you’d rather not know what happens in this novel, please do not read any further.In “Where The Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls, a boy named Billy saves up $50.00 for two years to buy two hunting dogs. In this story, Billy is determined to train his dogs, Little Ann and Old Dan, to be the best. Nothing would stop Billy from achieving his goal.He started his journey in the middle of the night, alone and walked 30 miles to pick up the dogs. After a year of training Old Dan and Little Ann, he started hunting every night and then he took the coon skins to his grandfather’s store to sell. Once he spent 2 days chopping down a tree his dogs had treed a coon in. He would not leave the tree until he got the coon.Two mean boys challenged Billy to hunt down a ghost coon. After a long chase, the dogs treed it, but Billy did not want to kill it. There was a bad fight with the mean boys’ blue tick hound and Billy’s dogs., One of the brothers took Billy’s axe and fell on it and bleed to death. The other brother ran away in shock. Billy was sad about the bad accident.Billy’s grandfather entered his dogs in a big hunting contest where they spent a few days competing against other dogs. In the final day, there was a blizzard while they were hunting and the dogs nearly froze to death circling a tree they had chased the coon in to. Just like Billy, the dogs would not give up. Billy went home with 2 trophies and $300.00 prize money. Billy continued to hunt. One night the dogs came up against a mountain lion, who attacked them and Billy. Billy’s dogs saved his life but were severely injured. Billy’s father helped get the dogs home and Billy’s mother helped stitch up Old Dan. Old Dan died soon, and Little Ann found his grave and died there. In the spring, rare red ferns grew at the grave site. .Billy grieved and asked God why the dogs had to die. He did not want any other dogs but Old Dan and Little Ann. Billy’s parents tried to make him feel better. His parents had always dreamed about moving to the city so the children could attend school. His father showed Billy the box of money he had been saving from all the coon skins he sold and the contest money. Thanks to Billy’s great love for his dogs and his success and determination, the family was able to move to the city.In this book, I learned to never give up no matter how hard it gets in life. I also learned to set a goal and try to achieve that goal.