Dear Blog,

I am currently reading Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. This is an older book, a classic, published in 1961. The story is about this boy, Billy, and starts off when he was little.

At the age of ten Billy had gotten this sort of dog-loving fever where he would mourn and mourn till he could get a dog,a coonhound, even seeing a picture of a dog would set him off and he would get very sad knowing that getting a dog would cost too much money. Around the age of twelve Billy sees an ad in a magazine at his grandfather’s shop, the ad was for puppies, and the ones he wanted, coonhounds. Seeing this he got very excited but then quickly came to the realization that he would not be able to make enough money to get his puppies. Being the determined kid that he is Billy, secretly, worked for 2 years to raise enough money to buy his puppies. When he was 14 and had all of the money that he needed, he told his grandfather. He felt that because his grandfather was the one that provided him with the magazine in the first place that he should be the one to order the puppies and so he did. When the puppies were ordered Billy learned that he would have to go and walk through two states to go and get his pups. This brought him worry but he went on anyway. The journey was tough but he managed to make it back alive and finally showed his pups to his family and they were so proud and filled with joy. He named them Old Dan and Little Ann

After about a summer of training he and his pups were ready to go and start coon hunting. It went very very well for them and they got many coons. Because of the coon hunting skills that these two little pups had, they became well known in their state which brought in a lot of business for the grandfather’s store but along with the fame also came the enemies. There was this one family that no one really liked because they were crooks, thieves, and murderer’s. They came in one day to the store and the two brothers of the family challenged Billy to catch the ghost coon, this was the hardest coon to catch in the entire country! Billy accepted and then went with the two along with his pups to go catch the coon late at night. When Billy treed the coon the two brothers decided to jump him and hurt him as well as his dogs. First they held Billy down while they let there coonhound attack Billy’s but out of nowhere the two little pups fought back and nearly killed the dog when one of the brothers started towards the pups with and axe. The brother tripped and billy ran to retrieve his pups while the brother was on the ground but when Billy went to pass the brother he realized that when he tripped the axe blade punctured into him and cut open his stomach and he started bleeding out, fast. Billy was horrified and the little brother ran home crying and screaming. Billy stopped hunting for a few weeks and then came down with a terrible fever.

This is where i left off in the book. So far this is one of my favorite reads of the year so far and i highly recommend this book to everyone that can check it out at the library. I definitely think that it will get better as i keep reading and most likely will read it again and again.