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chellyfish 's review for:
Old Yeller
by Fred Gipson
There are some classic books that slip through your fingers somehow and you're not exactly sure why you've never read them -- this was one of those books for me, so I decided to listen to the audio version, as I typically like to do with kids' classics I missed out on reading but still want to experience now, as an adult.
Old Yeller fits into a very well-established kid's book convention of animal-stories. It's possible that it's the most famous of this kind of book, and so I went into it knowing a great deal about the story already, through social osmosis. That said, it didn't dull my liking for the book at all. It was enjoyable from start to finish. Travis is left as the man of the house with his father away, and one day a thieving, rascally dog steals the family's meat and then just won't leave. Travis loathes him at first, but Old Yeller proves himself a valuable part of the family, in turns saving every single family member. A major strength of this book is the way in which its written: it was published in the 50s but takes place about a century before, and the local, mid 19th century Texan language is strong and captivating. In addition to this, the relationship between boy and dog is grown gradually and done very well, making the stakes at the end more potent. Everything that Travis and Old Yeller go through is rooted so heavily in the times they live in that you just sink into the world of this book thorougly.
The subtraction of one star comes from an aspect of the book that really, really did not age well (and that reads like it was written in the mid-1800s): the language surrounding the Native Americans. They are consistently painted as faceless heathen enemies. The descriptions of the Coates father keeping a gun to shoot any Indians that came onto their property made me visibly cringe. These details were not important to the story at all, and seem so out of date, even for the 1950s let alone today.
Old Yeller fits into a very well-established kid's book convention of animal-stories. It's possible that it's the most famous of this kind of book, and so I went into it knowing a great deal about the story already, through social osmosis. That said, it didn't dull my liking for the book at all. It was enjoyable from start to finish. Travis is left as the man of the house with his father away, and one day a thieving, rascally dog steals the family's meat and then just won't leave. Travis loathes him at first, but Old Yeller proves himself a valuable part of the family, in turns saving every single family member. A major strength of this book is the way in which its written: it was published in the 50s but takes place about a century before, and the local, mid 19th century Texan language is strong and captivating. In addition to this, the relationship between boy and dog is grown gradually and done very well, making the stakes at the end more potent. Everything that Travis and Old Yeller go through is rooted so heavily in the times they live in that you just sink into the world of this book thorougly.
The subtraction of one star comes from an aspect of the book that really, really did not age well (and that reads like it was written in the mid-1800s): the language surrounding the Native Americans. They are consistently painted as faceless heathen enemies. The descriptions of the Coates father keeping a gun to shoot any Indians that came onto their property made me visibly cringe. These details were not important to the story at all, and seem so out of date, even for the 1950s let alone today.