20 Bad Books To Give To Young Kids

(Image via Doubleday)

12. Where the Red Fern Grows

If you love dogs, don’t read this book. If you’re even just vaguely fond of dogs, don’t read this book. To think of it, if you like animals in general, just leave this book sitting on a shelf for, oh, forever.

That’s not entirely fair to Where the Red Fern Grows. It is, in itself, a perfectly fine young adult novel. In it, Billy Colman relates his childhood in Oklahoma’s Ozark Mountains.The young Billy desperately wants two coonhounds to help with hunting and provide companionship. Despite his family’s impoverished status, Billy manages to scrape together enough money to buy two young puppies from a Kentucky breeder.

Billy names the dogs Old Dan and Little Ann. They soon become a well-regarded hunting team. They bring in more pelts to his grandfather’s store than any other hunter in the region.They even manage to win a championship raccoon hunt, which earns Billy $300 in prize money.

The book ends in tragedy, however. The dogs tree a mountain lion, which soon attacks. Billy enters the fight with an ax, but is too late to save Old Dan. Little Ann soon loses her own will to live, stops eating, and dies only a few days later.The book ends with the image of a red fern growing between the two dogs’ graves. A red fern, according to local legend, can only be planted by an angel.

Though Billy feels ready to move on thanks to the inspiring sight of the red fern, I never really did. Many of my friends didn’t, either. Again, this is a well-written novel, but it’s notorious (amongst dog lovers especially) for the deeply sad ending.