From Literature into Real Life

I'm in trouble, and it's too late to do anything about it.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post [see Sunday, May 8] extolling the virtues of a juvenile fiction book, Where the Red Fern Grows. It's about a boy and his two coon hounds back in the Ozark Mountains. I wrote about it, and I talked about it. I told my grandkids what an exciting and gripping story it was. I brought the book to their house, and for the past two weeks, when I'd to their house, I'd read them a chapter or two.

Now they've turned literature into life. They live out in the country on five acres. Not too much land, but for a ten-year-old boy, his eight-year-old brother (nicknamed in our family Mr. Outdoors), and their six-year-old sister, it's become the river bottoms back in the Ozark Mountains.

They pooled their hard-earned money and they've bought a live-animal trap. This was no small feat. One of them contributed $30 and the other, $25, and off to the local hardware-sporting goods store they trooped. The youngest admitted that she wasn't really part of the purchasing plan. The trap looks something like a hamster cage, but the "door" is a one-way ticket to the inside. The animal steps in; the door springs shut, et voila!

They want to catch a rabbit and sell its pelt for six dollars (once, at a leather-craft store, they saw a rabbit skin for $6, hence the supposed market value for the pelt).

Into the trap, they put some lettuce and a carrot. "That's going to feed 10 rabbits!" Dad said. They placed the trap near the bottom of a tree where they found some rabbit poop. When I asked how they knew it was rabbit poop, the eight-year-old told me, "Dad said, and we looked it up on the Internet."

The other day, I was on the phone with my daughter, when all of a sudden, I heard the kids' voices yelling in the background, "We caught something in the trap!!"

"Uh-oh, gotta go," my daughter said.

It turned out they hadn't caught a rabbit, but a squirrel. They hadn't noticed the squirrel den in the bottom of the tree near the rabbit poop. The squirrel was hopping mad! He was poking his nose through the bars, not quite understanding why he couldn't get to where he wanted to be.

Their dad sprang the trap and the squirrel raced up the tree. The dog, who had been held in check by my daughter, yanked away and sniffed back and forth and all around, later sitting sentinel at the base of the tree.

The trap has been reset and placed in a new location. If they catch a female, they're going to let it go. If it's a male, there'll be rabbit stew.

As the kids' great-grandfather used to say: "First you catch the rabbit; then you make the hasenpfeffer."

A Fantastic Book!

I've been doing a lot of different reading for a research project that I've undertaken. My reading has taken me into the realm of juvenile fiction. These are the kinds of stories that middle-schoolers (grade 4-8) read or have read to them.


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.