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Dec 17, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

I read this book in sixth grade and cried my twelve-year-old heart out. Another book I share with my sixth grade students. What I find is that this book in particular allows the boys in my class to get emotional about a story and be able to talk about it together and normalize it. It is almost a contest for them of who got most upset. One student said he finished it on a plane ride home and that the flight attendant kept coming up to him asking him if he was alright. I've had many students tell More...

7 comments like (31 people liked it)

Sep 29, 2011

Mike (the Paladin) rated it:

Let me say first that some love this book and to be fair I never read it except to get an idea of the story. You will find in my books low ratings for Black Beauty, The Yearling, Old Yeller and any books that have the "pain of life motif" in common. By the way this includes Cold Mountain. Look up my review and you'll see I try to give recognition that it's well written but just not a book I can like. And these ratings are how I feel and what I think of these books. Some will say how th More...

18 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Melinda rated it:

I read this book in 4th grade. One day I was waiting for class when an obnoxious boy decided it would be a good idea to take it. I informed him that it was my favorite book in the whole wide world and if he didn't give it back that he'd be sorry. He then threatened to tear the book in half. With that I walked over to him, hit him over the head with my cast (I had broken my wrist a few weeks prior), took my book and calmly walked away.

I think that a book that inspires someone to viole More...

4 comments like (33 people liked it)

Nov 28, 2007

Josephine rated it:

I loved chatting over email with Amy Schimler about her dog Beans (see yesterday's interview), and it got me thinking about my favorite dog book of all time. We had to read Where the Red Fern Grows in 5th grade, and I have to admit I was completely dismayed that we had to read a "boy book." I struggled the whole time to distance myself from Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann, probably flipping my permed hair and muttering "this is *so* stupid" and "who cares about a couple More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2008

Robert rated it:

VERY BAD!!

30 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 25, 2008

Meme rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2008

Marci rated it:

There are a handful of books we read as children that so completely capture our hearts we cannot and would not ever forget them. Where the Red Fern Grows is such a book. An elementary teacher read this book to my class when I was in about third grade, beginning for me a love that has seen me through many personal readings, with even more readings to my own students through the course of my career as an elementary teacher.

What most people do not know is that this classic tale of a boy More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 14, 2008

Evan rated it:

This book can easily be the best book i have ever read. The book is about a young boy you wants to buy a pair of hunting dogs, but does not have enough money. After a while he saves enough and buys them, and names the dogs Big Dan and Little Ann. The book is great for many people becasue you can relate youself to the characters no matter who you are. The story flows very easily and reads very well. This book is one of those kinds of books that once you start, you just cant put it down, and you k More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 30, 2009

Kyra rated it:

I love this book. IT is a heart warming and very touching book about a boys love for his dogs. It made me laugh, it made me cry,it even made me say omg whats going to happen next. It is my all time favorite.

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 01, 2008

Michelle rated it:

You know how everyone you know says they cried after they watched "Old Yeller"? Yeah, I didn't cry nearly as hard watching that movie as I did when reading this book...worse yet, we read it for an English class in jr. high--yeah, that's a stigma an already geeky girl needs on her middle school resume!

Regardless of that, this is still one of my all-time favorite books. It does a great job of portraying loyalty, stamina, work-ethics, and love at a level that children and adul More...

9 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 31, 2012

Madison rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 20, 2008

Kendra rated it:

We finished it! I read this aloud with my kids and as I read through the final sentences, we were all in tears. I am not talking teary eyes, but body rocking sobs. My six year old did not stop for almost twenty minutes. When he was finished he said it was the greatest story he had ever heard. My eight year old wanted to meet the author and thank him for such a great book. I loved this book and recommend it to everyone. Just read it with a box of tissues nearby.

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jun 11, 2008

Peter rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Aug 29, 2007

Silvercharmer rated it:

This book belongs on that special list of YA books that stay with you for the rest of your life. You remember them, remember how they changed your perspective, how they made you feel, and how they helped you grow up. This book in particular belongs at the top of that list for me, right alongside Bridge to Terebithia, and I consider it a mandatory title for anyone who is in the process of growing up.

Clear as a bell I remember the night I finished it, right before (or quite after, as More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2008

jOrDaN rated it:

Loved the story when i read it, made me cry, very hart-warming story about this country kid who saves up to buy puppies, and then spends time with them teaching them how to hunt "coons" and the dogs and him relationship grows throught their adventures together untill when a mount lion unexpectedly attacks the boy the two hounds fight for his life causing one dog to die from flesh wounds and the other from loneleness dies and are buried in a place where a rare red fern grows like god pl More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 11, 2012

Estella rated it:

First read this in 6th grade. I cried a lot. This time around...I cried a lot, I'm afraid to say. Rawl's writing pushes all my crying buttons. The language is elegant, but warm. And once the story gets going, it's one event after another, full to the brim with tear-inducing self-sacrifice and loyalty. I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff. But I never get the impression that I'm reading a sappy book. There's too much grit and realism in it for that, the language too restrained. It's perfe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

RachelAnne rated it:

SPOILER ALERT!
.............................................................................................................
The dogs die. WHY do they always do this to dogs in children's books? to quote Gordon Korman's delicious farce, No More Dead Dogs "the dog always dies. Go to the library and pick out a book with an award sticker and a dog on the cover. Trust me, that dog is going down." For those sick of getting attached to lovable animals just to have them die in AG More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 05, 2011

Anna rated it:

I didn't read this as a kid and have always wished I had.

I finished today and it was great; sad, of course, but I knew it would be. It was one of those books that makes me wish I could have known the main character and lived in his world. I wonder what kids who have to read it for school think of it.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jul 01, 2009

Jane rated it:

This is a heart pounding book that was writen flawlessly.

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2012

Elsa added it

Where the Red Fern Grows
Wilson Rawls A Bantam Starfire Book, 1961, 249 pp.,$3.50
ISBN 0-553-27429-5

“I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between there two bodies. The story went on to say the only a angel could plant the seeds of a red fer More...

0 comments like

Dec 26, 2011

Seth rated it:

It's perhaps cruel that I read a book about dogs to my desperate-for-a-dog son, who lives with two we're-so-not-getting-a-dog parents. Crueler still is that I read him one of the great (spoiler alert!) the-dog-dies books representative of so much of the Newberry Award canon.

But read it I did, and very much enjoyed coming full circle with Where the Red Fern Grows. You see, I had it read to me in the fifth grade (by Mr. McConnell), along with Summer of the Monkeys. I loved both books, More...

0 comments like

Dec 19, 2011

Yajaira rated it:

The title of this book is "Where the Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls. What attracted me to this book was the fact that its about friendship and loyalty. For me, my favorite kind of books are the ones that have to do with loyalty, friendship, sadness, and happy moments. This book has all of those things. What also got me into curiosity to read it was because my sister read it and she recommended it to me.

This book starts of with this poor boy named Billy. What he really enjo More...

0 comments like

Nov 07, 2011

Two Bibliomaniacs rated it:

After missing the opportunity to fall in love with this novel in our youths, we did the next best thing and engaged our six year old son in a read-along.

As a young boy growing up in the Ozarks, Billy Colman wants nothing more than a hunting dog of his own. His family is unable to provide the necessary financial help, so Billy decides to take matters into his own hands. For two long years of hard physical labor he scraps and scrapes the necessary funds. However, once Billy finall More...

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Oct 25, 2011

Gaurav rated it:

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. I kid you not, I WORE THIS BOOK OUT! The spine broke and the pages fell out. I’m not sure why this book resonated so much with me as a child but something about it. A young boy who wants some hunting dogs. His dirt poor family (and they are literally dirt poor) cannot afford them, so the young boy takes that old faith-based message to heart: God helps those who help themselves. He scrimps and saves and finally earns enough to purchase two red-boned hound More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 05, 2011

Clara rated it:

As you might imagine, fourth-graders can be a pretty rowdy bunch. When I was in fourth grade, I was in a very loud, energetic class--so energetic that our teacher sometimes had to give us the "evil witch stare" (as she called it)in order to supress our loudness. But there were twenty minutes of every day, though, that we were all very quiet. For those twenty minutes, my classmates and I were so busy hanging on to our teacher's every word that we forgot to move our lips. And why, do you More...

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Aug 18, 2011

Laura rated it:

I read somewhere how Marjorie Hinkley read books to her family as they went on trips in the car. One daughter recounted that she had read them "Where the Red Fern Grows" and how when they had arrived at their destination the prophet had to drive around the block a few more times until all their tears were dry. This had a huge impact on me. First, it made me realize that although I can't read to my children in the car (I get really car sick) that I needed to find other opportunities More...

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Aug 03, 2011

Carolyn rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Jul 13, 2011

Zach rated it:

In this book Billy reflects on his childhood. He begins years ago just as automobiles were starting to develop. It was a simple time with almost none of the technologies that we enjoy today. Billy begins with the throbbing pain in his heart from wanting two red hound pups of his very own. With his parents too poor to purchase the dogs for him, he begins to save his money. For two years he saves until finally he can purchase the dogs. He walks to town to pick them up on an overnight hike, and upo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 18, 2011

Isaac rated it:

Where the Red Ferns Grow by Wilson Rawls was a great book in my opinion. Pretty much the book is about how there is this kid named Billy. He lives in the Ozarks and he loves hounds. He eventually saves up enough money to buy to which he later names Little Ann and Old Dan, and takes them out to hunt every night to get coons. It had all sorts of stuff included in it, which I liked. For example a lot of the book had to do with love and loyalty and much more. What thing that stood out to me in this More...

0 comments like

Apr 07, 2011

Delayna rated it:

Were the red fern grows by
Wilson Rawls

“I’m ashamed of you little girl!”(p71) said Billy Coleman to his girl dog he might be mad at her but this 13 year old boy went through a lot to even get these dogs .Billy is a boy who lives in the Ozark hills were most of the story takes place . He wanted dogs since he was 11 but not 1 but 2 hunting dogs .He saw that begging his parents didn’t work so he More...

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