How many times would you have toread The Yearling to squeeze it dry, as one of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's characters might say, how many times before you knew everything this author wanted you to know, before you felt all the things she wanted you to feel?
The first time I read The Yearling, it was a blistering hot summer, and I was Jody's age. I felt the shade ofhis forest, the coolness of the spring...
No novel better epitomizes the love between a child and a pet than The Yearling. Young Jody adopts an orphaned fawn he calls Flag and makes it a part of his family and his best friend. But life in the Florida backwoods is harsh, and so, as his family fights off wolves, bears,and even alligators, and faces failure in their tenuous subsistence farming, Jody must finally part with his dear animal friend. There has been a film and even a musical based on this moving story, a fine work of great American literature.
