One title that kept popping up is Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls. He spent his youth in the Oklahoma Ozarks and never encountered a book till he went to high school. I don't know if he wrote anything else besides this novel. When I was roaming the stacks at the public library yesterday, I spotted this book and took it out. It's a boy-and-his-dogs story.
At around six o'clock last night, I sat down on the couch and started reading this book. I was absolutely hooked from the first page. Six hours later, I finished the book. It's not a long book--249 pages--nor a large book--4.25 inches by 7 inches--but it pulled me into what Nancie Atwell calls "the reading zone." I was gone. I was living in that story and through that story.
When I was growing up, I was a reader, especially of dog and horse stories. I don't remember encountering this book. I'm sure I would have remembered it if I had read it back then.
The characters are believable (though the good are very good and the bad are very bad) and the plot moves along at a brisk pace. There are many twists and turns in the story. I couldn't put it down! I give it a 10++ out of 10.
I took six hours of my life to read a book that grade schoolers read. I'm glad I did.
Good writing is good writing, no matter where we find it.
how magical to be pulled into that "reading zone", no matter what book is responsible! and excellent that there is writing out there that lets young people leave the narrow confines of their own worlds and enter into new realms of existence! (i'm a believer that the world of the imagination works in parallel with the actual world and is a cognitive tool for understanding it.)
ReplyDeleteNancie Atwell expresses this same sentiment: "Every day they [her students] engage with literature that enables them to know things, feel things, imagine things, hope for things, become people they never could have dreamed without the transforming power of books, books, books" (The Reading Zone, page 19).
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