kalikitab64b2

1970 Newbery Medal Winner A heart-rending story of the life of a black sharecropping family in the south. None of the characters are ever given names, which helps the reader put him or herself in their shoes. It focuses on a boy whose father steals a ham to feed his family. The father is arrested and sentenced to hard labor. Their dog, Sounder, tries to follow the cart in which the father is taken away, and gets half of his face blasted off, barely surviving. Later as the father returns crippled from an explosion at a quarry, Sounder's injuries seem to echo his, and in fact the dog follows his master in death. The descriptions of what the boy wanted to do to the man at the jail and the guard at the work camp were realistic--I could identify with his feelings of powerlessness and frustration in that situation, with violent imagery being his only outlet. It was a harsh story, but I was glad in the end that the boy had learned to read, that he got to see his father again despite the terrible outcome, and that his family had hope for the future. It does make me wonder, though, if there are any kids' stories about dogs in which the dog doesn't die? It seems like there are so many dead dog stories that I wonder why it's such a trope in children's literature. Possibly because an animal is usually the first experience a child has with death. But why dogs in particular? Why not cats or mice or birds? Huh.

2022-11-14 17:23