Monday, January 18, 2010

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings


The Yearling is our family's all time favorite book. Written in 1938, the story takes place in early 20th century backwoods Florida. Jody (a boy) lives alone with his parent on their subsistence farm. He is the youngest of seven children, but the only one who survived. Jody always wanted something of his own and early in the story he adopts an orphaned fawn which he nurses and raises. In time the fawn grows up to start eating the food the family needs to survive and Jody must make some serious "growing up" choices.

The characters in this story are very real and there are many heart rending moments between Jody, his parents and his best friend (whose odd name is Fodder wing). I don't want to say too much for fear of ruining the story. Our family read this book out loud together and it is standard to which every other book is compared. If there is such thing as a 10 out 10 book, this is it.

The Yearling was also made into a movie with Greogry Peck and Jane Wyman, but the book is really worth reading. As the book won a Pulitzer prize, I can't imagine there is a library anywhere in the English speaking world that wouldn't have at least one copy of it.

Enjoy!!

- Thomas G.

3 comments:

elizabethmarie said...

Well I really like that movie so now I just have to read the book! :-) It sounds very good.


Wow with all these book recomendations, I don't know what to read first!!!! :D

Amy Dashwood said...

The movie is amazing, but the book is so much better. There's a lot in the book that the movie just couldn't portray...it really is a beautiful piece of literature.

A Daughter of the King said...

I've seen part of the movie - I didn't know there was a book! I'll have to look for it :)