The Yearling (Scribner Classics) by Rawlings - Marjorie Kinnan (2013) Hardcover

I highly recommend this book to readers. It is a very interesting story about a little boy who takes care of a young fawn; they both grow up; Jody becomes a man and the fawn becomes a yearling. But in order for Jody to let go of his boy-hood, he had to kill the yearling.
The end was so sad, you have to read it.

Great writing, description and character development. It takes you away. It is, yes, a coming of age book but almost a greater book for parents to read. It is one of many great works by this great American author. I love what she writes. Nuffield said.

Very good book and now Andrew Peterson, a song writer, has a song about it. It is called "The Ballad of Jody Baxter". All young boys should read this book. It is on the same level as "Where the Red Fern Grows".

THis classic can be read in any version; however, I was looking for a copy that had wider margins. I had hoped my son would be able to draw the various plants and animals mentioned in the book on the side.

VERY slow but OK prose - until very abrupt ending suggestibly attempting to create a modern Shakespear tragedy: you wait forever for the boy to find the faun, watch them grow together dearly then within pages the mother shoots the fawn in the leg with a, "smoking shotgun", they boy finishes it off by pressing the muzzle of the gun against the back of the fawn's neck as it peers up at him with, "liquid eyes", then runs away from home to eventually return to live happily ever after ----- all within the last two chapters.
We want our daughter to love reading - not abhor it. She sobbed when telling me this conclusion. Effective literature? To those with little vision maybe>

I've read a lot of classics recently, ("Old Yeller", "Pollyanna", "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm"), and with only a few exceptions I have been pleased and impressed by these books. They are all better written and more engaging than their old-timey classics status might suggest. "The Yearling" falls into this category, for all of the reasons touched on my its many admirers.

What seems to be somewhat in dispute is "who should read this" and "when should they read it". The book is long, (well over 400 pages); in part the dialogue is in a lost vernacular; it's quiet and subtle. Many reviewers dismiss young and modern readers as potential fans because the book lacks sex, violence, swearing and explosions. That strikes me as a shallow and rather unfair indictment of young readers.

I do think the book is challenging for young readers and that many of its strengths would not be readily appreciated by a younger reader. Early on in the book we learn why the father, Penny, chose to live in the Florida scrub rather than more comfortably in a river city. This turns into a touching meditation on freedom, independence, human mendacity, and the pleasures of living somewhere that affords you a little elbow room. While I understood what Rawlings was driving at here I'm not sure a young reader would have had the life experience to even register what was being addressed in those passages. So it goes, throughout the book.

Now maybe I'm all wet, but many of the pleasures of this book, it seems to me, are ahead of young readers. They haven't addressed in their own lives and minds what is being portrayed in this book. The result is that the book seems dull or boring or pointless. There are lots of "classics" that fall into this trap, (I'm looking at you Willa Cather), and forcing them on kids isn't going to help anyone.

So, I'm keeping this on the shelf and I'm keeping an eye on what the kids are reading, understanding and appreciating. Let the kid come to book; be ready to try it more than once; wait for the lightbulb to go on.

VERY slow but OK prose - until very abrupt ending suggestibly attempting to create a modern Shakespear tragedy: you wait forever for the boy to find the faun, watch them grow together dearly then within pages the mother shoots the fawn in the leg with a, "smoking shotgun", they boy finishes it off by pressing the muzzle of the gun against the back of the fawn's neck as it peers up at him with, "liquid eyes", then runs away from home to eventually return to live happily ever after ----- all within the last two chapters.
We want our daughter to love reading - not abhor it. She sobbed when telling me this conclusion. Effective literature? To those with little vision maybe>

I've read a lot of classics recently, ("Old Yeller", "Pollyanna", "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm"), and with only a few exceptions I have been pleased and impressed by these books. They are all better written and more engaging than their old-timey classics status might suggest. "The Yearling" falls into this category, for all of the reasons touched on my its many admirers.

What seems to be somewhat in dispute is "who should read this" and "when should they read it". The book is long, (well over 400 pages); in part the dialogue is in a lost vernacular; it's quiet and subtle. Many reviewers dismiss young and modern readers as potential fans because the book lacks sex, violence, swearing and explosions. That strikes me as a shallow and rather unfair indictment of young readers.

I do think the book is challenging for young readers and that many of its strengths would not be readily appreciated by a younger reader. Early on in the book we learn why the father, Penny, chose to live in the Florida scrub rather than more comfortably in a river city. This turns into a touching meditation on freedom, independence, human mendacity, and the pleasures of living somewhere that affords you a little elbow room. While I understood what Rawlings was driving at here I'm not sure a young reader would have had the life experience to even register what was being addressed in those passages. So it goes, throughout the book.

Now maybe I'm all wet, but many of the pleasures of this book, it seems to me, are ahead of young readers. They haven't addressed in their own lives and minds what is being portrayed in this book. The result is that the book seems dull or boring or pointless. There are lots of "classics" that fall into this trap, (I'm looking at you Willa Cather), and forcing them on kids isn't going to help anyone.

So, I'm keeping this on the shelf and I'm keeping an eye on what the kids are reading, understanding and appreciating. Let the kid come to book; be ready to try it more than once; wait for the lightbulb to go on.

Maybe you've seen the film version with Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman. The movie is good, but it doesn't do justice to the book. Most people will tell you the book is about a boy and his pet fawn. It's about much more than that. Young Jody Baxter lives in the backwoods of Florida in the years following the Civil War. His family is poor, and they have to deal with the challenges of life on the frontier. He does indeed find a young fawn and takes it in for a pet, but that's only a small part of the story. The larger story is about a young boy learning about the harsh realities of the world, and in the process he discovers that life isn't always fair.

The book contains a lot of humor, but also a lot of sadness. I recommend it to people of all ages.

"The sun was sinking into the saw-grass. The marsh was golden. The whooping cranes were washed with gold. The far hammocks were black. Darkness came to the lily pads, and the water blackened. The cranes were whiter than any clouds, or any white bloom of oleander or of lily. Without warning, they took flight."

- <i>The Yearling</i>, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I read <i>The Yearling</i> once as a kid, when I loved boy-and-nature coming of age stories like The Pond and Rascal. It went over my head. I remember fleeting scenes: the day swelteringly hot, humid, tense, and a dark rattlesnake coiled on a dusty footpath uncurls faster than a flicked whip and strikes. I remember there's a deer but I also remember being disappointed that it doesn't appear until halfway through the novel, and the whole first half is incredible slow-paced. I remember the ending was sad, but not why.

The things I notice as an adult are very different. The book is still slow, but it's because it's dense, has a lot of meat to it, and you have to stop and digest every few pages. The language isn't pretty or flourishy, but it's simple and vivid. Complex ideas are handled the whole time without ever being directly confronted, so the quotable lines are few and far between.

The story is set in north Florida, post-civil war, and I don't think I've ever read a novel set in Florida that so well captures the character of its landscape. The sea is barely in the story at all, but the book still calls up that part of the country effortlessly, naming its native botany with a skill now mostly lost. My parents grew up in north Florida, and I lived there until I was eight, so the names of trees and flowers, the descriptions of soil and storm, added to the feeling of lost innocence, an eden that cannot be reclaimed, that the whole novel evokes. The boy Jody, the central character, is an only child, about 11 or 12 when the book begins. He lives on a subsistence farm that is barely making out. He's spoiled by his father and ignored or scolded by his mother, and their family's isolation gives him a sort of existential loneliness.

It's fascinating and troubling to read about a time when you literally had to kill something in order to eat, and that primal struggle to survive draws forward a lot of raw ideas that hurt to touch, especially if you've been raised without farming or hunting or death really being a part of your life. Jody loves animals and hates killing them, but he also recognizes that if his family doesn't hunt they won't have enough to eat. Even if they were able to subsist on a vegetarian diet, the farm is being constantly threatened by predators that also have to be killed. Bears and wolves attack their milk cow, and foxes steal their corn. And yet Jody and his father love living on their isolated farm in large part because it is so wild. Even though they have to fight for their lives every minute, they find time for wonder and awe. In one section, tormented by wolves killing all their livestock, they set out with their neighbors to intentionally kill every wolf in north Florida (I hadn't even known there ever were wolves in north Florida, if that tells you how successful/common this type of hunt was). Months later, they see a single limping wolf sneak into the yard of the house to play by moonlight with one of their dogs. They watch in wonder from the window. "Hit's almost certain the last one," says Jody's father. "Pore thing, hurt and lonesome-- Come visiting' its nighest kin to pick a play." That aching sense of self-inflicted, inevitable loss pervades the whole novel.

I was an ardent conservationist as a child, and maybe that's why I didn't love this book the first time I read it. It presents harshly the real struggle for resources between people and animals, and to some extent, between people and people. I remember feeling shocked at Jody's constant confrontation with death. Rawlings captures in a golden haze that time when you have become unselfish enough to truly love but do not yet believe in loss, and it cannot be fully appreciated as a novel until you have crossed that threshold yourself. People who love nature, like Jody and his father, do not want to see it as the vicious, brutal, mysterious, complex balance it really is, and that vision, repeated in different ways throughout the book, is what finally brings Jody into adulthood.

In 1938 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's The Yearling won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Since then this classic of Cracker life in Northern Florida has remained in print, delighting readers who fall under the spell of its enchanted prose and grand story of growing up.
Though The Yearling is at its heart the story of Jody Baxter, the only living child of Penny Baxter and his wife Orry, and Jody's love for a fawn which he has brought to the Baxter farm, this fine novel is also the story of a group of people living at the outward rim of society, the hardships which they encounter, and the fabulous natural world with which they are surrounded. After moving to Cross Creek, Florida, in the late 1920s, Marjorie Rawlings carefully studied the land and the people she found there. Eventually, she worked her notes and observations into this novel about a boy and his pet deer, and the demands of love and survival. Here we meet the Forresters, a rough country family who scrabble constantly to scratch their living from the harsh land. We meet Fodder-Wing, the Forrester who is sickly and weak, but whose affinity for nature and all its creatures imbues this novel with its strong sense of the natural environment and its importance even in a world in which the city holds sway.
Rawlings followed up The Yearling with Cross Creek, the story of her own life in Northern Florida and the lives of her neighbors, of working the orange grove, of exploring the swamps and forests surrounding Cross Creek. She tells us of her struggles on the land, of her eccentric and wild neighbors, of the blacks and poor whites who helped her raise her oranges. In Cross Creek we are given a piece of Northern Florida as it was in the 1930s, for Rawlings joins herself, body and blood, to the land. Here, for example, she writes of the road she walked in front of her house:
"Every pine tree, every gallberry bush, every passion vine, every joree rustling in the underbrush, is vibrant. I have walked it in trouble, and the wind in the trees beside me is easing. I ahve wlked it indespair, and the red of the sunset is my own blood dissolving into the night's darkness. For all such things were on the earth before us, and will survive after us, and it is given to us to join ourselves with them and be comforted."
If you've read Rawlings, rejoice that she once lived and wrote these books. If not, you should expect a great treat.

Not surprising that all the negative reviews are from kids made to read this for school. So sad. This story is a classic. So well written and poignant for its time (set in 1870 in rural America). I am disappointed that children cannot find anything interesting that isn't plugged in. My children are home schooled and love this book and others like it. They are beginning to appreciate stories without a happily ever after, and extract the greater value and character building in it. We read Great Books for a reason: advanced vocabulary, superior use of language and writing style, strong characters, and cultural context, which teaches both history and compassion. Great books build deeper thinking. Video games do not.

'The Yearling' is a simple story about people living off the land in rural Florida circa 1870. We learn about one particular family's hardships and the love between a boy and his pet fawn. The author does a stellar job capturing the local language and culture. It's all very touching.

Bottom line: one of those few books deserved to be called a classic. Strongly recommended.

This classic novel was written by an author who wrote it at her home a few miles south of Gainesville (in Cross Creek, Florida) and it won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. It is about life in rural central Florida in the second half of the 19th century, being centered around a boy (Jody Baxter), his family, and his pet fawn (Flag). Throughout the novel, the reader sees a boy growing up and having to face some tough decisions. We also learn much about the natural history, environment, folk remedies and beliefs, and culture of rural Florida. We also learn how precarious one's existence is out in the wild. Jody's father, Penny Baxter, has to kill a doe in order to use a folk remedy for a snake bite, not knowing that there is a little fawn nearby. Jody keeps the fawn to raise and to have as a friend. But, as the fawn grows older, problems arise. The author based her main characters loosely (very loosely) on a rural family she knew living in central Florida. Contrary to most reports, this family did not live in Cross Creek. They had a small place deep in the woods in the center of what is now the Ocala National Forest. I decided to see if I could find that site in the late 1980s. It turned out not be difficult at all. Armed with a map of the National Forest, I went on a hike (on some beautiful trails) and found the place. Nothing remains of the house. However, the family burial plot is still there, as are the graves of most of the members of the family. Unfortunately, it is sad to report that a number of the headstones have been stolen. Some of the stones referred to Civil War veterans. As you probably know, such stones draw very good prices on the "black market." The Forest Service had signs posted to warn people against stealing items but, being deep in the woods, they were taken anyway. I'm certain that the people who took the stones have no idea of their literary significance. Perhaps one day the Forest Service or some historical organization will replace the stones, but with all the cutbacks in funding, it'll probably be a long time before that happens.

Every time someone refers to Children's literature as a genre less worthwhile than general fiction or Children's authors as second-class writers, I bring up this book. The Yearling was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.
The Yearling is a coming of age book set in the hard-scrabble scrub of Florida around the turn of the century. It is filled with the embarrassment and delight felt by a 12-year-old boy named Jody Baxter. One minute, Jody whirls faster and faster, arms held straight from his shoulders like a water-turkey's wings, until he becomes dizzy and drops to the ground, and then the next, he longs to follow his father, mix with men, and learn their ways.
The Florida in this story is as much frontier as was the Wild West. This is a Florida unimagined by all those children who visit Orlando. This is a Florida inhabited by panthers that have cubs with blue spots, by bears that walk upright down the road like men, and by whooping cranes that dance cotillions in the marshes. This is a Florida where one's nearest neighbor lives four miles away, and a family has to work constantly to have enough food to survive another winter.
Jody and each of his parents face these hardships differently. The story begins on a day when Jody is just a boy, addled with April and dizzy with Spring. He is the youngest and only surviving Baxter child. Jody thrived when one frail baby after another had sickened and died, almost as fast as they came. Jody's mother seems to have given "all she had of love and care and interest to those others." Jody's father is "a bulwark for the boy against the mother's sharpness."
"Leave him kick up his heels and run away," the father thinks. "Leave him build his flutter-mills. The day'll come, he'll not even care to."
Jody forgets his work and makes mistakes but his father covers for him. The boy's only problem seems to be loneliness, but even that is eased when his parents allow him to keep an orphaned fawn. The fawn and the boy grow up, becoming yearlings together. By the end of one year, Jody has sat up all night at his best friend's wake, been beaten for helping another friend against three bullies, become enemies with his neighbors over their burning an old woman's home, and tried to run away only to realize there is nowhere else he wants to be. He learns love and disappointment, as well as the fallibility of his father. Jody learns that life is "powerful fine, but 'tain't easy." And knowing all this, Jody enters manhood, leaving childhood. However,
"A mark was on him from [that first April] day's delight, so that all his life, when April was a thin green and the flavor of rain was on his tongue, an old wound would throb and a nostalgia would fill him for something he could not quite remember."
Note on reading level classification:
While this book is listed as a Young Adult Reading Level book, I read the book when I was in the fifth grade and would recommend it to children of that age level or above. While a certain amount of maturity and emotional sophistication is required in order for the reader to fully understand and appreciate the issues raised in the book, my eleven-year-old daughter had no trouble doing so, and in fact, she was deeply moved by the story. Our family read the book aloud to one another during a week's vacation in a log cabin the mountains. It was a wonderful and rare experience to share this book in that remote location with no telephone nor TV to distract us.
Reviewed by Linda Murphy
Children's Editor of the Writers Hood

I originally wasn't planning to write another review for the store.com, but the movie of "The Yearling" was on TV last night. Remembering how it touched me, especially the sorrowful end, I decided to take a look at the reviews posted here.

Most were brilliant, right to the point, and then I saw "kid's review" and a few others that found the book boring.

Sorry, children, that in an age of Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, not to mention strumpets like Britney and Jessica Simpson you don't have the chance to come of age. Or to appreciate a classic, moving read. Yes, we're an image and media-driven society, and the negative effect of it all falls on these kids who not only hate a classic, but can't even write why they hate it in a meaningful review.
This the price we are paying when our kids can't feel struggle, pity, or hurt.

"The Yearling" was a very realistic tale of the life of a poor American family struggling to make ends meet in late 19th Century Florida, and of a boy who like many today, doesn't understand that there is bitter besides the sweet in life - especially when it comes to the loss of a beloved pet. I can only wish that some of the sorry weirdos who have recently murdered schoolchildren or another weirdo denizen of Florida had read this book, or the Twain and Jack London classics when they were children. They might have learned something good and moral beyond the twisted thoughts that they came of age with.

This book, along with the aforementioned Twain and London classics, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and Bill Bennett's "Book of Virtues" should belong on the bookshelf of any and all American mid-and upper-elementary school age children.

I teach 6th grade and I would not hesitate in recommending this book or any of the classics that I grew up reading to my students.

I remember checking The Yearling out of the library when I was 10 or 11. I read the first few pages and was so intimidated by the length of the novel that I returned it to the library two weeks later...unread. My loss. I just finished reading this book and it is a beautiful, poignant, rich story that I will hold in my heart forever. I appreciated Rawlings' detailed descriptions and her extensive character development. I felt like I was really there in the Florida scrub experiencing everything that Jody experienced. Jody's love for Flag is so lovely, touching, beautiful...and familiar. Have you ever had a pet whom you loved more than anyone else in the world and would do anything for? There is no other love like it...it is true devotion. The scene where Jody meets Flag is so enthralling that I wanted to read it over and over. I felt like I knew each character and I became so attached to Jody and Flag and their devoted friendship that I wept in more places than one.

Although I think this is an excellent book for children and adults, I'm not sure that there are many teenagers who will appreciate it. It is a harsh story in places, but it is not so much the harshness that I'm talking about. This book is about a time when people were more at one with nature and life was simple and slow-moving. There are no explosions, no sex, no swearing and no gratuitous violence. I loved the novel for those reasons. To many young people, this may spell "boring". Although I would have loved this story at any time in my life, had I read it when I was a teenager, I would have never had the patience for the rich detail. Now, I savor it. I loved the story for its slow-moving, simplicity and detail and because it was a total break from the warp speed and superficiality of today.

This is actually the best book I've ever read, and definitely the most touching. I can't wait to have children old enough to read it together with them. This is an unforgettable coming-of-age story...I think you have to have come of age yourself to really appreciate the landscape that Jody traverses with his cherished friend and where it brings him. I'm so glad I took the time to read this wonderful book and really savor it. I can't recommend it highly enough.

After moving to Florida, I had to sample this classic. I was looking for local color in my newly adopted state. WOW - it grabs you with colorful descriptions of subsistance living in the Florida scrub. The boy's feelings towards his parents and neighbors are powerful explorations of growing up.

It has wonderful descriptions of the boy and his love for a fawn that grows into a troublesome yearling that threatens his family's livelihood. A real coming-of-age story.

Should have equal appeal to teens and adults, really a great story. Read it with your kid and discuss the numerous topics it raises (hunting, loyalty, duty, nurturing, assessing people, nature, and so much more).

After moving to Florida, I had to sample this classic. I was looking for local color in my newly adopted state. WOW - it grabs you with colorful descriptions of subsistance living in the Florida scrub. The boy's feelings towards his parents and neighbors are powerful explorations of growing up.

It has wonderful descriptions of the boy and his love for a fawn that grows into a troublesome yearling that threatens his family's livelihood. A real coming-of-age story.

Should have equal appeal to teens and adults, really a great story. Read it with your kid and discuss the numerous topics it raises (hunting, loyalty, duty, nurturing, assessing people, nature, and so much more).

This book is a classic. It opens with Jody leaving a log
cabin to hoe in the corn field. A huge bear named Slewfoot kills
the Baxter family sow. Old Julia, the family hound is badly wounded and the bear escapes into the wild.

The scenery depicts man as one with nature. Jody comes from a traditional society where he experiences great outdoor living. Penny discusses the bear hunt and the character Lem trades a New England gun to Penny in exchange for a feist. Before dawn, a fox enters the house after having been chased by a dog. After the morning breakfast, Buck Forrester rides Jody home by horse.

Jody returned home from the Forrester's home to find out that Penny killed a deer. Jody and Penny headed to the sinkhole to chat. Next day, they hunted deer and traded for supplies. The Baxter's major concern was deer-hunting for survival.

The sinkhole reminds us further of the survival motif.
Jody falls ill and is not certain whether or not the culprit
is the brierberry. Jody shoots a deer on a fishing trip.
Grandma Hotto is a stock character with a jovial personality.
Penny teases Jody about liking Eulalie Boyles- a neighbor.
When Eulalie sticks her tongue out at Jody, he throws a
potato at her. Oliver and Lem fight over a girl named Twink.
Jody awakens sore after a fight. Oliver loses the fight and
Penny is proud of Jody's valiant participation . Jody bids
goodbye to Oliver and returns home to find the hogs missing.

Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake. Buck stays with the Baxter's
until Penny recovers. He tells Jody that Fodderwing has died.
Another part of Jody's initiation into adulthood is seeing
two bears fighting over a female bear. The Baxters enjoy much
and persevere through heavy rains. Slewfoot kills a hog and
the family decides to kill all of the hogs for the winter food.

The Forresters, Penny and Jody hunt. They kill 2 deer, bears and
capture 10 cubs. Next the Baxters go to Volusia to visit
Grandma Hutto. The book has survival of the fittest themes;
whereby, bigger animals kill the smaller ones. Jody is the only
surviving child of the Baxter family.

The theme of the book concerns a family's struggle to survive
and thrive in the wilderness. Survival of the fittest rules.
People must kill animals to survive. Wild animals threaten
the homes of families routinely. Overall, the work is a good
read for young people. It is written in an easy conversational
style of writing. This work is assigned in middle school or
high school as required reading.

The Baxters live some 15 miles from the nearest town and four miles from their nearest neighbors, the Forresters, a family of massive sons who are variously good hearted and drunks. In this environment, the Baxter family clears out its life.

Over the course of a year, Jody lives through all the terrors that nature and, sometimes, man can inflict and prepares, unknowingly, to eventually take over Penny's role as provider for the family. In the opening chapter, Jody has a particularly fine time off on his own, in the woods, and when it is over he cannot sleep because "a mark was on him from the day's delight, so that all his life, when April was a thin green and the flavor of rain was on his tongue, an old wound would throb and a nostalgia would fill him for something he could not quite remember." It is the last full day of his childhood innocence.

If you want information of the plot from this historical book here is some info:
I like the book and the movie, so if you really want to get into to it I reccomend both.

Courtusy of Wikipedia

[...]
Plot introduction
A child named Jody Baxter lives with his parents, Ora and Ezra "Penny" Baxter, in the animal-filled central Florida backwoods at the start of the twentieth century. His parents had six other children prior to Jody, but they died in infancy. He loves the outdoors and loves his family. He has wanted a pet for as long as he can remember, yet his mother Ora says they only have enough food to feed themselves.

A subplot involves the hunt for an old bear named Slewfoot that randomly attacks the Baxter livestock. Later the Baxters and Forresters get in a fight about the bear, and continue to fight about nearly anything. The Forresters steal the Baxters' pigs and while Penny and Jody are out searching for their stolen pigs, Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake. Penny shoots a deer to use its liver to draw out the snake's poison. Penny recovers, but the doe leaves behind a fawn.

Jody adopts the fawn, whom he names Flag, and it becomes his constant companion. The story revolves around the life of Jody as he grows to adolescence along with the fawn. The plot also centers on the conflicts of the young boy as he struggles with strained relationships, hunger, death (of his childhood companion, Fodder-wing Forrester, due to sickness), and the capriciousness of nature through a catastrophic flood. Throughout, the Baxter family is in contrast to their uncouth neighbors the Forresters, and the Baxters' more refined relatives in the village of Volusia. Jody experiences tender moments with his family, his fawn, and their neighbors and relatives. Along with his father, he comes face-to-face with the rough life of a farmer and hunter.

As Jody takes his final steps into maturity, he is forced to make a desperate choice between his pet Flag and his family. The parents realize that the now-adult Flag is endangering their very survival, as he persists in eating the corn crop which the family is relying on for their food the next winter. Jody runs away after his mother attempts to kill Flag, shooting him in the leg. Jody is then forced to shoot Flag in the neck himself. In anger at his mother, Jody runs away, only to come face-to-face with the true meaning of hunger, loneliness, and fear. After a failed attempt to run away in a broken-down canoe, he is picked up by a mail ship and dropped off in Volusia. In the end, Jody returns home and assumes his role as the emerging caregiver to his family and their land.

The Yearling continues to inspire our family. For three generations, fathers in our family have read this story beside the warmth of the family hearth, yet amid the vivid swirling of life experienced thereby. A boy long ago really isn't any different from me. He learns about life and reality amid idyllic beauty of character development, landscape and feelings. My children, as I at my fathers knee, longed for the special time that "dad" would share this family treasure, together.
My children already are arguing about who gets to inherit the copy my dad gave me when I was twelve.

I recently re-read this book after many years, having first read it when I was only ten years old. So moved by this story, even at that age, I knew that I was destined to become a writer myself.

Set in the Florida backcountry during the Post Civil War years, it is essentially a coming of age story about a twelve year old boy whose family is struggling daily just to survive. The difficulty in tending their meager crops and few livestock against harsh weather and predacious bears seems alien in our world today, yet was very real not so long ago. For me, it is the wonderfully descriptive prose that captured my soul. Every smell, the warmth of the sun, the sound of pattering rain, even the thrill of the hunt are written in such vivid colorful imagery that one feels drawn into these pages. As so with Jody's loneliness and isolation. His only friend is Fodderwing, a crippled boy who lives miles away, and his only pet is the family dog, who is loyal to no one but Jody's father, yet is too old to romp like a pup anyway. With the fawn coming into his life, he has a changed perspective. Jody is a little boy with a new friend and something to be responsible for, but most of all, something to call his own. Unfortunately, and as in most cases, trying to tame a wild animal ends up in tragedy, and twice in this story the reader faces along with Jody, the inescapable heartbreak that comes from having lost someone or something near and dear. The final result is that we witness his transformation to manhood.

Miss Rawlings must also be commended for the way her characters are developed. Simple yet thorough, by the time she's finished with each, it is as if you have known that person your entire life.

Probably for me, what drew such a strong connection to this book was the fact that I could find many parallels to the difficult life of my own maternal grandparents. Although they lived in the forest and prairie of Central Illinois, their speech was similar, and they endured much of the same hardships. Fortunately, because of their grown children and a successful, adult grandchild, most of that was behind them by the time I came along. Still, I understood what they had gone through to raise three kids on a small plot of ground miles from town, with no running water or electricity. Like Jody in this story, his boyish behavior of running off to the woods all day to play and explore was much like how I remember my time visiting the grandparent's farm. The same with my brothers and cousins.

I suppose this is considered a children's book, but I recommend it for everyone. Take the time to enjoy this wonderful story. I promise that you will not be disappointed.

James Hart Isley

Author of The Bear Hunter

I had wanted to read The Yearling for many years. Decades ago, when my children were young, I tried to read it with them, but they were daunted by the backwoods Florida dialect. We just couldn't get off the ground with it. Finally now, in retirement, I've found time to read it just for me. Like other reviewers, I enjoyed absorbing the carefully and wisely crafted story, appreciating its harsh truths and the thorough development of its characters. The ending moved me deeply. Such hard, but valuable, lessons life doles out!

Please note that readers of this story, especially young people, will have to deal with its, fortunately very infrequent, use of the "N" word. I guess the best way to do that is to realize that this is one more facet of 1930s culture that the book reflects. Adult discussion of this may be helpful.

If you could have anything in the world, what would it be? For years, Jody Baxter knew the one thing that he desperately wanted- and it was as simple as a pet. When he is ten, he finally finds his fawn. Now, Jody has a wonderful life living with his family, and his tame fawn on their farm in Baxter's Island, Florida. He spends his time hunting or fishing with his father, visiting his grandmother, or playing with his fawn, Flag

and his friend Fodder-Wing. What could possibly go wrong?

This book, The Yearling, by Marjorie Rawlings is an excellent read, for the more advanced reader. Rawlings is very good at creating an exciting story and excellent at accurate description. If you enjoy a longer, but still interesting, more detailed story, this book is definitely for you.

When Jody Baxter finds the young fawn abandoned in the woods his life changes dramatically. He goes from a bored, and slightly lazy and depressed boy to a whole different person. He loves to play with the fawn more than anything, and will do anything for it. Because of his devotion to it, he does any work he is asked to do, as well as he can, because he wants his parents to let him keep it. But the fawn seems to Jody's parents to be more trouble than it's worth. It is destroying their crops and food supplies. How will Jody's family survive the winter with no food?

I thought that this whole book is interesting even though it is so long. Because of the length, I think it would be hard to actually keep up the reader's interest, but Rawlings does a very good job at it. Her description of the forest scenery is also, at times, shockingly good. Truthfully, this isn't the best book I have ever read, but is definitely among the top three. It has all of the features of a good book: the plot is

interesting and original, the length and language are decent, and the ending is truly moving and thought provoking. If anyone is looking for a good read, no matter what type of books they normally select, I would highly suggest this one.

And an indictment of today's degeneracy. At the end of the novel, Penny Baxter says to his son: "Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin...What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on." Today, that last sentence would have to be changed to: "Why, stay down, feel sorry for himself, and sign up for as much government assistance as he can."