Where The Red Fern Grows

I read a couple hours this past week in one of my favorite books of all time. Where The Red Fern Grows, a children's novel written by Wilson Rawls. The first time I read this book was aloud in fourth-grade, which is about the average age level I would recommend beginning this book due to some of the book's content. Billy is a twelve-year-old boy who lives in the Ozarks (I think it's somewhere along the eastern Oklahoma border). He longs for some hunting dogs; he cannot even sleep or eat because he yearns for his own coon hounds to hunt "Mr. Ringtail." He finally decides if he wants his own hunting dogs then he will have to get them himself. Therefore, he spends two years collecting money from travelers selling minnows, crayfish, fresh fruits, and picking blackberries for his grandfather's store. He eventually saves enough money to order his own dogs somewhere in Kentucky. He cannot even wait for them to be delivered, so he decides to leave in the middle of the night and head to Tahlequah to pick them up. Town is very different for Billy; he sees fancy-dressed people, stores that contain sodas, houses with neat lawns, and an unknown building that has tons of kids his age playing on swings and a slide (the school). Billy gets a little roughed up by some troubling kids, but the marshal saves him and buys him his first soda before heading home. Billy and his two pups - Little Ann and Old Dan - spend the night in a cave where a mountain lion interrogates their night. However, his pups remained loyal at his side and barked what they could to protect their master. The fire also helped keep the mountain lion away. Billy gets home and his mother is upset that she was unaware of his absence. He gives her the material he bought in town with the extra money he had collected to buy the dogs. He also gives his three younger sisters candies and his father a pair of overalls that he bought, too. This somewhat compensated and settled matters due to his leavings in the middle of the night.