where the red fern grows and related readings wilson rawls

However, it became apparent that there were too many children to feed, so Wilson left home. Wilson’s father was fortunate enough to get work in a nearby town. They made it as far as New Mexico, where their car died. When the Great Depression hit, the Rawls, like many other families, packed up all their possessions and headed towards California. There he would use a stick to write about the things he saw and heard around him. Because they could not afford paper, Wilson would go to the river and pack down the sand along the banks. When Wilson’s mother read Call of the Wild (1903) to him, he immediately decided that he would write a “boy and a dog” story someday. The school was run by a rotation of local mothers that did their best to give the simple instruction they could.įortunately, his grandparents ran a store nearby, and they occasionally ordered books for the Rawls children. When a small schoolhouse was finally built, he and his sisters had to cross a river to get there, holding onto a rope to make sure they didn’t get washed away.

His mother did her best to teach him how to read and write but didn’t have a formal education herself.

Woodrow (Wilson) Rawls grew up poor in the Ozark mountains in Oklahoma. That story is nearly as powerful, and also worth telling. It was only in recent years that I learned what it took Wilson Rawls to write that book. About an impoverished boy and his love for his hunting dogs, it was also the first book that made me cry. Even though it was set in the Ozarks more than a thousand miles away and several generations before my time, it was one of the earliest novels that I could relate to. Like in many schools, Where the Red Fern Grows (1961) by Wilson Rawls was required fifth-grade reading. I don’t have the type of memory that allows me to keep track of all the books I’ve read and what happens in them, but I do recall one of the first stories to leave have an impact on me.

Where the red fern grows and related readings wilson rawls