I knew someone would object to that statement. But at least for eight year olds reading should be fun, and I stand by that. I’m not saying don’t create upsetting art, but I don’t think you should be forcing grade-school children to view it.
As for whether death should be talked about . . . of course it should. Let’s talk about how we can solve the AIDS epidemic in Africa, because some actual good can come from that. But leave that out of my fictional entertainment, thank you very much.
I agree with Freudian slit; Where the Red Fern Grows is a book that has so many important lessons and themes in it, and the deaths are not the only things that shape and influence Billy as he grows up.
I had the same teacher for 5th and 6th grades, someone who I adored and influenced me greatly. WTRFG was one of his favorite books, and he read it to us both years I was in his class, every day after recess. His read-aloud style was so cool, and we always begged him for just one more chapter whenever he stopped for the day.
I think the book is a bit heavy for 3rd graders, but the right teacher could definitely help younger kids understand the complex themes in it. I suspect the author meant it for kids who are quite a bit older, though. The movies are SO BAD, though. Nowhere near as good as the book!
One of the big lessons was how hard Billy had to work to buy his dogs. He worked for two years, doing lots of different things, to earn $50! That really impressed me, and it’s also an interesting way to show kids how the value of money/goods changes throughout the years. Shows that kids can be creative and work toward goals. Then Billy had to walk miles and miles to pick up the dogs, and when he had money left over, he bought gifts for his family. Generosity lesson!
The skills Billy had to learn to camp out on his own and to hunt coons were interesting to me, too. The training and partnership of the dogs, and their relationship with Billy are cool, too. The male dog is strong and brave, but the female is very smart, so they’re complementary. Teamwork! Cooperation!
The slyness of the “ghost coon” delighted me. Rooting for the underdog! The boy who is killed by falling on the ax, well, he was a real jerk, and he was trying to do something horrible, acting in anger, and what happened? A comeuppance. Karma lesson? Maybe.
There’s a lot more, and just skimming the Wikipedia entry on the book, I realize I really want to read it again.
The deaths in the book, they weren’t gratuitous or superfluous to the story. They were catalysts for Billy’s mental and emotional growth, and his development into manhood. There are some lessons in life you just can’t learn any other way but the hard, gut-wrenching way.
I can’t speak to school reading choices. I do remember reading WTRFG, though I don’t remember if it was for school or not. I do remember the animal deaths, but I don’t remember the human deaths.
OTOH I was allowed to read whatever I was capable of reading, and went to see whatever movie my mom went to see regardless of my age and movie rating, and turned out fine. Whatever I wasn’t ready for or didn’t understand in either case just went over my head. The only things that traumatized me were thing in my own real life. Granted, some kids get overly sensitive about things, and they probably need to have some guidance with regards to what they experience. But this is a personality thing, not an age thing.
Actually I’m tempted to wonder… how are appropriate reading levels for books and determination of what is a classic determined?
Heh, I remember reading WTRFG and loving it, even though the ending was devastating to me at that age around 7-8 years old… It was a beautiful book though, and still brings back warm and positive memories for me (though amusingly I had totally forgotten about the axe scene). But I liked that book and definitely can appreciate it being a classic.
Of course, I then started to think about another similar book that I loved that your daughter would really not like then: Of Mice and Men. That’s another book which I love and the ending just haunts me to this day as being so very beautiful and tragic at the same time, similar to WTRFG…
It’s those moments that tend to stick out in my mind for those books that I love. Of course I didn’t get to read Of Mice and Men until the 7th grade, but still a great book.
And an amusing side note, I thought about what I was reading when I was in the 3rd grade- that was another Dog Dying book: **Cujo **by Stephen King. That’s another book that had a HUGE impact on me as an 8 year old… the ending scene where she finally triumphs and stands up for herself and in desperation takes on Cujo to save her son’s life…
And then, when she actually wins and manages to defeat the dog, and save her kid… Only to find out that during the fight w/ the dog, her little boy finally dies by dehydration/heat stroke in the car
From that point on, I was hooked on King, where even though there are good guys and bad guys, that doesn’t always mean that the good guys will always win.
Perhaps you should give her another book to take her mind off the last one? That’s what always worked for me. I remember LOVING White Fang, as it totally sets itself up to be another “dog dying book” that I was just regretting turning each page to get to the end because I loved the character so much… She might enjoy that one, though again I have no sense of what’s appropriate age wise for your kid. But I do know that’s another book I loved around that age similar to WTRFG.
Very well said. And that’s probably why there are so many dead dog books: there are only so many ways you can depict this kind of thing where it’s sad but ultimately a life lesson, and pets are one of those ways. If it’s a parent that dies, it’s not a sad-but-valuable experience, it’s a horrible tragedy for a young child. Of course the cynical flip side is that it’s easy to manipulate people by writing about the death of a beloved pet.
Marley was dead, to begin with…
Definitely. But I don’t think these books fall into the manipulation category–that is, Old Yeller, Red Fern, or Charlotte’s Web. Not every book with a death is going to be a great one, but I do think that if you’re reading a book and you actually feel sad for a character, that does say something about the writer’s talent. E.B. White got us to feel sadness at the death of a gray barn spider, for example.
Upthread it was said that books for kids should be fun. But again, I question that–kids may not be able to appreciate everything an adult can. But they can process quite a lot. And if you only give them fun, cute, happy stuff, a lot of them will be quite bored or skeptical. As a kid, you know when you’re being pandered to and when you’re reading something genuine. Think of how popular Roald Dahl has been over the years–and the guy loved to subject kids to a lot of horrible things in his books.
I notice a lot of times on other websites, things like “trigger warning” in case there’s something (eating disorder related, rape/assault related) that could bother people or send them into a panic attack/relapse. Or a lot of sites where people will ask that sizes/weight/height not be mentioned at all because of the eating disorder thing. And many of those people complain about being “triggered” by ads and billboards that they see in real life. It’s always struck me as kind of odd because, well…life doesn’t come with trigger warnings. Sometimes in life you are going to read or actually experience something upsetting. But we get over it and ultimately become stronger. I have a hard time believing that there’s someone so emotionally fragile that reading Where the Red Fern Grows counts as something that has scarred them for life.
Heh. Speaking of “fun, cute, happy stuff” and “trigger warnings”…
These remind me of the warnings that Lemony Snicket put on the back covers of his “Series of Unfortunate Events” books.
I agree. I never read Old Yeller, but I did read Red Fern and Charlotte’s Web. (And I don’t know how many times I watched the cartoon version, although in hindsight some of the songs were pretty annoying.) And for that matter I read Sounder and The Yearling, too. I may not have read all of those by third grade, but I’d probably read some of them by then, and I definitely did by about fifth grade. And I didn’t learn about death from any of that. I lost a lot of goldfish over the years. We had two cats who died when I was about five or six, and my parents’ dog died at around the same time. I didn’t remember that dog. None of this ruined my life or scarred me all that much.
Kids are definitely not being given a lot of credit here. If Red Fern isn’t your choice of pleasure reading as an adult, I can respect that. I haven’t read a lot of serious novels the last couple of years myself. Saying that stuff is out of bounds in a book for kids is untrue and unrealistic.
The great-grandaddy of this trend is probably Wild Animals I Have Known, by the late 19th early 20th century naturalist and writer Ernest Thompson Seton.
In particluar one of the stories in that book - Lobo, King of the Currumpaw:
Well written, based on a true story, just unbearably sad. Seton’s reason for writing it that way was deliberate - to raise awareness of the need for conservation - and it is certainly an unforgettable story; or at least, I remember it well from my childhood.
I don’t think the OP is calling for censorship or book banning; he’s just wondering why it’s so common.
I don’t think we should ban anything, or protect kids from unpleasantness in the classics, but I also don’t think you have to make kids love a dog then kill it to make a book valuable reading. I don’t think kids need to cry themselves to sleep over some stupid book. There is plenty in real life worth crying yourself to sleep over.
When I was learning to talk, and well before I could read, I was stressing over the Vietnam war on TV, with nightly casualty reports. Before I ever saw Bambi, mom gave us kids a pet duck, and we loved that duck. Then one day the duck “ran away” and we had chicken for dinner. Then mom got mad over something and told us we’d just eaten our pet.
I need Bambi’s mom to die why again?
Oh, I gotta comment on this. While I never read that kitten strangling story, I was treated to a school field trip to see it acted out when I was in eighth grade.
I can still remember it all these years later. And I don’t mean that kindly.
If the play is anything like the book, it’s repulsive. The words go into long, loving close-up detail of the strangling, the poor animal’s paws flailing, eyes bulging, tongue lolling. It sounds like the author is masturbating over the memory of it. And for an adolescent cat lover to watch some community theater actor writhing around pretending to act out that hideous scene is not, well…pleasant.
I wondered why our teachers thought we needed to see that.
The rest of the play was about as cheerful. One set piece recited various school papers that a character had written growing up. The last one is a suicide note. And then the character hangs himself. Nice.
Maybe it’s just me though. No one else in my class seemed disturbed by this. I probably didn’t either. Kids at that age are careful to show that they can watch anything, and not get upset.
Still, it pisses me off all these years later to remember it.
I forget what the collection of plays was called. “From the Minds of Serial Killers to You.” would’ve been appropriate.
The OP and tim314 both seem to take the point of view that kids shouldn’t have to read this kind of thing, as it’s just too sad and kids just shouldn’t be made sad. The OP does contain the following. I’m guessing the second part is what he later described as tongue-in-cheek:
There is a difference between not forcing someone to read a book, and not allowing someone to read a book. Not having these books as required reading at school only does the former.
This isn’t just about required reading, it’s about whether or not this stuff is appropriate for kids. Siddhartha Vicious and tim314 were expressing the view that this stuff makes kids sad, and kids should either be allowed to be innocent and whatever for a little longer, or that making people sad should not be the purpose of art. I never said anyone was advocating the censoring or banning of books.
Of all the books I read at an inappropriate age, I believe Lord of the Flies did considerably more damage to my psyche than the rest of the lot. Watership Down came a close second, though.
To clarify my own view a bit, if a kid wants to read a book knowing it has a sad ending, I’m fine with that. I don’t think it’s going to be some horribly scarring long-term trauma or something . . . obviously not, since we all survived reading that stuff in school just fine. But I just don’t see the value of forcing this stuff on kids. I don’t buy into the whole notion that kids ought to read sad books to build character or whatever. Kids will learn to deal with death when their grandma dies or their dog dies or whenever, and that’s going to be sad whether or not they’ve read a story about some boy’s dog getting disemboweled by a puma. Why not let them read books that are fun and encourage a lifelong love of reading?
Maybe for some people Where The Red Fern Grows did that . . . I’m not denying it’s a well-written book and all (in as much as I can remember it given that it’s been 20 years). But for me it’s just another dead dog book I had to read because someone thought I had to learn some stupid life lesson.
It’s really not one or the other. I think almost all kids have some understanding of death by the time they’re reading. They’ve talked about it and at least had a pet die even if they haven’t lost a relative. Sad books like Where the Red Fern grows didn’t put me off reading. I never read anything that made me feel like giving up books. The thought never crossed my mind. If you raise a kid to enjoy reading, I think they accept sooner or later that some books are sad. Aren’t they usually sad the story’s over?
For me, things like this absolutely fostered my life-long love of reading in a way that a steady diet of “fun” books never would have: it was books like Old Yeller and Bridge to Terebinthia that showed me that books weren’t just a fun hobby, they were important. Teachers shouldn’t read nothing but these sort of high-emotion books, but they should read some, for the kids like me.