A lot of the reasoning behind making books like this required reading isn’t to build character or teach life lessons about death and whatnot. That’s just sort of a side effect, really. The real purpose is to teach kids how to read literature. You know, books with themes and symbolism and things that are mentally and emotionally difficult, ones you have to put some effort into instead of treating like mental popcorn. If you want older kids to be able to read and understand things like Dickens and Hawthorne and Austin and Salinger and so forth, you have to give them the necessary tools–not just the mechanics of reading like vocabulary, but the tools of comprehension and analysis like literary devices, themes, symbolism, etc. Just like vocabulary and sentence structure, those things develop over time, and you have to start somewhere, sometime early enough to give them time to learn this stuff.
And as emotionally difficult subject matter goes, death is actually a pretty good way to start kids off, simply because for most of the class this isn’t their first experience with death. It’s easier for them to wrap their heads and hearts around something like that than it is for other issues they’re not familiar with. God knows the dogs dying in WTRFG had me curled up with my brand-new red puppy and sobbing till I made myself sick, but overall it bothered me a lot less than societal issues that were the focus of books like The Witch of Blackbird Pond or Julie of the Wolves, where on top of the stress and worry and fear and pain, there was that added level of “WTF is wrong with these people? Why are they acting like that?” (I dwelled on those books for months afterward, and they still disturb me somewhat more than 20 years later. I was over the dogs within a day or so.)
As for the merits of the book itself, it was a very good book. I’ve not read it a second time, but there are a lot of really great pieces of art that I found valuable but never, ever want to re-experience. Pretty much all of the Dickens and Steinbeck I’ve ever read and Schindler’s List spring immediately to mind. Of course, I’ve always had a soft spot for those old ballads about star-crossed lovers where one dies making a noble sacrifice to protect a loved one and the other dies of grief and the roses/rose and briar/trees grow out of their graves and intertwine. And that’s what WTRFG is, a retelling of those old ballads and legends with animals, and platonic love instead of romantic.
I echo this sentiment. And these sad books are, in many cases, fun as well. Not to sound like some psychopath, but I did genuinely enjoy reading Where the Red Fern Grows. Yes, it had a sad ending, but the fact that it made me sad made me realize I must have been really happy/attached to the dog characters when they were alive, to paraphrase Butters in the Raisins/goth kids episode of “South Park.”
I just think it’s important to take children’s lit seriously. It’s not exactly like adult lit, no, but it shouldn’t just be happy books. Light fare is great–I have a lot of nostalgia for the silly, unrealistic series books. But the heavier stuff can be great, too. And, as CrazyCatLady pointed out, it’s not just great because of death–it’s because it’s well written and has literary merit.
As a kid I definitely wanted to be taken seriously to some extent. As an adult now when I reread children’s books (yes, for fun), I sometimes think, “Wow, I read that as a kid? Isn’t that inappropriate?” and then I realize it’s freaking me out to think of a kid being freaked out, but that as a child I was never that bothered.
Ok, being sorry the book is over is not on the same level. But like I said, kids do have something of a handle on death by that point in their lives. They read the book, they’re sad for a little while, and they get over it. It’s not the end of their childhood.
I don’t believe I ever said it was . . . my problem really isn’t that the kids will be so horribly traumatized that they’ll never recover or anything so melodramatic. It’s the whole attitude of “read this story with a horribly sad ending, it’ll build character” that I don’t like. And yes, I know I’m totally caricaturing the attitudes of the people who advocate reading these books, and yes, I know there are other reasons people like these books besides the whole “It’ll force kids to deal with the reality of death”, thing. But certainly some of it is “let’s force kids to deal with death”, and some of that has been articulated in this thread. And I just feel like, geez, leave the kids alone. They’ll all learn how much sadness there is in the world soon enough without it being shoved down their throats in English class.
But you know, I had to read Old Yeller and Red Fern practically back to back in Elementary School (I can’t recall if we read one book in between), so maybe I have a little chip on my shoulder about this stuff.
Who’s stopping kids from reading books that are fun? Assigning one book for school isn’t preventing children from reading other books. I read all the time as a kid. I got in trouble for reading under my desk in class, and I remember my mother was always telling me I should read less and play outside – or do chores! – more. The fact that I was occasionally required to read a particular book for school did nothing to change this.
The books that children do choose to read for fun on their own time are rarely full of sweetness and light, either. The most popular children’s series of all time is about a boy whose parents are murdered while he’s still a baby, who’s raised by relatives who abuse him, whose life is repeatedly threatened, who is betrayed and endangered by adults he trusts, and who witnesses the murders of some of the few adults who genuinely cared about his well-being. Oh yeah, a beloved pet gets killed too. And yet millions of children have sought out and enjoyed the Harry Potter books.
Reading a book where some sad things happen is not going to destroy a child’s interest in reading. If I’d been prevented from reading anything but books where only nice and pleasant things happened all the time then that might well have made me lose interest in reading, but reading books where animals or people died or other sad or scary things happened did not. Frankly, I do not believe that many children get all that upset about sad things they read in novels anyway. I don’t remember ever crying over a book as a child, and a number of the anecdotes in this thread – including the one in the OP – are about children being upset by things they didn’t read but saw in movies instead.
This is a distinction worth making. I think a scene in a movie is a lot more likely to make a child (or adult!) sad or scared, because in a movie you are seeing a realistic-looking situation play out before your eyes. When reading you have to use your imagination, which isn’t the same as really seeing something…even if you know rationally that the thing you’re really seeing is a bunch of professional actors pretending. With a book it’s also very easy to stop and take a break or skip ahead if the scene gets too intense, while with a movie then by the time you realize you’re seeing something upsetting you’ve already seen it.
Were I teaching fourth or fifth grade, Where The Red Fern Grows would be on my lesson plan for the year, for many reasons.
it’s a very well written story the kids can connect to. It touches on all the elements of fiction - plot, character, setting, point of view, and theme - and an enormous amount of learning can start there.
In and of itself, it is a superior piece of literature, far and above better than most of the popular children’s books out there. It treats the reader as an intelligent being and doesn’t spoon feed or sugar coat the story.
The deaths of the dogs are vitally important to the greatness of the story. First, while the phrase “builds character” is a cloying annoyance, there is something to it. The grief felt for these characters doesn’t make the reader tougher; it makes them stronger. It opens the reader up to their own emotions and gives them a carthartic yet safe experience. It provides an anchor for empathy. It’s difficult to empathize with someone suffering until you have experienced a similar suffering.
the deaths provide an insight that is lacking in stories with easy, happy endings. The dogs die, and the loss is terribly painful, but life continues. Good things still happen. You grieve, recover, and heal, and the memories of those you lost sustain you. Do you think, given a choice, Billy would refuse to buy the puppies if he knew they would die?
Yes, the children who read this book are going to cry. Most likely, they will turn to their teachers and parents for help in dealing with the emotions evoked by the story. These are not bad things.
Absolutely it’s a competition. For example, there are two competing philosophies of thought. One is that bullying and beating up sissies and such is a good thing; the other is that it’s a brutal remnant of a shameful past that we’re well rid of. Guess which philosophy is winning, and which one is a bunch of losers?
I can’t help thinking that a lot of people, not just here but in general, don’t quite “get” children’s lit. A lot of people tend to brag about not reading stuff for kids (like, “At four I was on War and Peace!” “In utero I was on John Milton!”). So I think they tend to assume that the stuff designed for kids should just be fun and cute. I don’t think they realize that the world of kid lit is…well, a world, unto itself. It’s complex and nuanced and I think it’s really incredibly hard to write children and YA lit really well. It’s not just, “Fun cute stuff for kids,” I mean.
One book that disturbed me as a kid was Shiloh which, IIRC, didn’t have any animal death in it, but had some pretty rough animal abuse. I was never bothered by the deaths in Old Yeller or Where the Red Fern Grows, but that animal abuse in Shiloh irked the hell out of me for some reason.
I can’t remember which author it was, I want to say either Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman, but some famous author who’s written both adult and YA fiction once said that adults often say they think his YA books are too scary for kids, but that kids never tell him they think they’re too scary for kids.
I’m completely familiar with children’s books, read 'em all the time. But I’ll distinguish between ones that feel like the violence and death serve a purpose, and ones that just feel like they’re trying to score cheap literary points. My adult reading mostly avoids mimetic fiction for somewhat similar reasons: I find it, as a genre, to contain too many emotionally manipulative passages and to be too light on story. I want my children’s books to be narrative-rich, just like I want my adult books to be.
Gaiman and Pratchett definitely qualify (although to be fair the one YA book I’ve read by Pratchett absolutely sucked).
When I was in elementary school or middle school, can’t remember which, I complained to my mom that we were reading all these books in which the dog dies. I loved dogs, still do, and I used to get so upset everytime the dog died. So at the next scholastic book fair my mom bought me a book ,which I highly recommend to you called No More Dead Dogs. I can’t remember who wrote it, but it’s darling. It’s a middle school age appropriate book about a child who is tired of reading books about dead dogs. I still have it.
I was reading it while accompanying my mom on some errrand or another. I was aaaaalmost at the end, and when she parked the car and said, “Okay, put 'er down, we’re going in” I begged and begged and begged to be allowed to stay in the car to finish. She relented (this was the 80s, before children weren’t allowed to stay in parked cars unsupervised) and went on in to the store.
I finished the book.
She returned to the (locked) car to find me sobbing hysterically. She, naturally, freaked out that “something” had happened. I was too young to have much inkling of what “something” might be. All I knew was that <sob> the dog <sob> and the other <sob> dog <sob> and the <incoherent wailing> … It took us a little while to sort each other out.
I think some of this is because there was a paradigm shift in terms of how we think of animals before and after the industrial revolution (or there abouts).
When the majority of us lived on farms animals were an integral part of everyday life, including the fact that most all of them existed to be eventually slaughtered. Even non-livestock animals like dogs and cats first and foremost had a job to do to earn their keep (keeping foxes out of the hen house or keeping the mice population in check). In other words, there was a distinct lack of sentimentality towards animals, even ones that weren’t going to be killed and eaten. That’s not to say there was no love for animals like cats & dogs, but it was decidedly tempered by the overall toughness of life in general.
Once most people lived in cities, animals were no longer functional. They became pets. They existed solely for emotional attachment and pleasure. Plus these feelings were especially strong in children who no longer had to bear or even witness the harsh realities of life.
I think that a lot of ‘classic’ literature took awhile to reflect this new sentimentality towards animals. And I think it also became an accepted way to introduce children to more serious and unpleasant concepts like suffering and death. Having these things happen to people, even in a fictional story, was not only considered potentially too traumatic, but too unreal and abstract for a child to be able to even grasp the concept.
I wasn’t old enough for Old Yeller but I cried for weeks over Bambi’s mom. Hell I did the same thing over Fry’s poor dog Seymour! And I can’t imagine any parent letting their kid watch Plague Dogs…
I remember reading an essay by Stephan King about Bambi and how most children’s stories are actually vary scary and traumatic. Can’t remember the title of it though.
Good article. Kids do like the “good guy, bad guy thing”. I’m not as worried about books being harmful as tv since kids watch a lot of it. Cartoons were funny deadly when I was a kid. How many times did Coyote die? Get a rock dropped on him, blown up by ACME explosives, etc…? I never read anything scary as a kid so I can’t comment on todays children’s books.
It’s shows like “Dumb As*” that worry me. I was involved in a few double dog dares that went too far but I never watched it on TV. Well except for "Evil Kenevil. That poor guy must be in a wheel chair these days! I find no fun in watching people hurt themselves.
I think it is perfectly normal for kids to go through a terrorizing animals stage. I am not proud to say I put some poor frogs in a few mail boxes…:eek: Some of the boys used to put them on the rail road tracks or play softball with them. Today I’m sure we all feel bad about it. It is when you don’t ever get out of that stage that gets people in trouble. Jeff Dalmer types that go on to terrorizing humans. Is a psycho born that way or do they get the ideas from books?
We need to traumatize young people at some point to get them prepared to act against their own “better judgment” for the good of society.
If we can’t use animals as the victims, what are we going to have to use? Mom, dad, or baby sister?
Teaching the ideal that some innocent lives must be expended for the common good is far ore useful and realistic than teaching that all life is somehow sacred or precious.