Classic books for 4th and 5th graders by Wilson Rawls

Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls, is the only children's book I know that was completely burned before publication because of embarrassment by its author-after he'd spent nearly 20 years writing it! Jim Trelease

Where the Red Fern Grows is one of the great American dog stories. However, it is about far more than a dog. It's about a boy and his overwhelming dream to own a dog, it's about family life in the rural Ozark mountains in the early part of this century, and it's about hunting... which means it's about death, too.

But as much as anything it is about (Woodrow) Wilson Rawls, who said the book-with one or two exceptions-is his boyhood in dirt-poor Scraper, Oklahoma. There were no schools available, so Wilson's mother taught her son and daughters at home as best she could. When the family moved to an area with schools, he attended for a few years until the Great Depression struck and he dropped out at eighth grade.

Beginning as a teenager, "Woody" bounced from place to place as an itinerant carpenter and handyman. He worked on construction jobs in South America and Canada, the Alcan Highway in Alaska. And along the way he began to write stories. But without formal classroom training, his spelling and grammar kept them unsold. Each one represented a broken dream and was hidden away in a trunk. Then just before he finally married and, not wanting Sophie, his wife-to-be, to know about his failed dreams, he took the old manuscripts from the trunk and burned them. Eventually his wife learned of the burned manuscripts and asked him to write one of them again. Hesitantly, he rewrote Where the Red Fern Grows-35,000 words-in three weeks of non-stop unpunctuated writing.

Where the Red Fern Grows tells the the exciting story of 10-year old Billy living in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression. After saving for two years Billy earns enough money to buy two hound pups, Ol'Dan and Li'l Ann. Together Billy and these two hounds go coon hunting almost daily. They even enter a coon hunting tournament. Read Where the Red Fern Grows to see if this young boy and his two coon hounds can bet the older contestants in the coon hunt.

Summer of the Monkeys is another great children's book by Wilson Rawls.

A tree full of monkeys the last thing fourteen-year-old Jay Berry Lee thought he'd find on one of his treks through Oklahoma's Cherokee Ozarks. Jay learns from his grandfather that the monkeys have escaped from a circus and there is a big reward for anyone who finds them. He knows how much his family needs the money. Jay is determined to catch the monkeys. It's a summer of thrills and dangers no one will ever forget.

This book was made into a movie which, as many, didn't live up to the greatness of the book.