If there's one book I remember from my own "big-kid reading era," it's Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. It's a powerful story of the relationship between a boy and his pair of hunting hounds. You'll follow Billy from puppy-sickness, to bringing home and training his dogs, on hunting adventures, and finally through the heartbreak of loss.

Because of the powerful emotional content of the book (animal death), we think it’s best for listeners ages 9 and up, but you know your kids best. 

As with all our Read-Aloud Posters, the activities on our poster for Where the Red Fern Grows are a mix of novel and familiar activities created specifically to highlight particular aspects of the book and help readers delve a little deeper into the story. In this poster, we especially wanted to encourage you to look closely at the setting in multiple ways and to examine the character of Billy.

In this blog post, we’ll examine some of the key features of this beautiful poster.

Poster design 

The first thing you're likely to notice about the poster is its unique design. We wanted to create a feeling from Billy's perspective: crashing through the woods following his dogs on a coon hunt. To do this, we created a unique fold-in design with some dimensional leaf cut-outs. We think they're beautiful, but if you're an unroll-and-go sort of person, they're also completely optional.

Of course the activity guide includes directions for grown-up prep, but here's a video to show how we did it.

 

Character Traits

The main character, Billy, exemplifies several admirable character traits. Choose your favorites from among our suggestions (or choose your own), and look for evidence in the text to support your ideas.

Event blocks

Around the poster are some blocks pointing to particular parts of the setting where story events occurred. You'll use the space to summarize the event, and in some cases, identify animal tracks.

Botanical coloring

The poster artwork incorporates many of the trees, birds and animals that are mentioned in the book. As you listen, you could choose to color in a way that is pleasing to you, OR you could do a little research to add some authenticity to your coloring.

• Do we have this tree (bird, animal) where we live? Can we look at it in our neighborhood and see its details first-hand?
• If not, what resources do we have available to consult?
• Take some time to look at the resources you have; what details can we incorporate into our coloring?

Animal Tracks

We've also included animal tracks next to several of the animals mentioned in the story (don't worry, they're intentionally not to scale). As you hear the animal mentioned and label it in the space provided, take some time to notice the tracks and their attributes. If you saw these track on a walk, would you be able to identify the animal? Which animal tracks look similar to each other? Why do you think this is?

 

Setting Clues

You'll need an external resource for this one (we actually recommend having a phone with Google maps handy)! There are a lot of clues sprinkled throughout the story. Pay careful attention to what you hear, use this space for notes, and then use resources of your choice to try to narrow down the time and place that the story takes place. 

Discussion Starters

With every poster we provide a few discussion starters to help get you and your readers talking about the book. For this poster, we've included these questions in the Activity Guide as follow-ups to activities on the poster itself.

 

We can't wait for you to experience Where the Red Fern Grows AND our Read-Aloud Poster with your family!