Book Review

It's a tearjerker week. We had Old Yeller for a movie and now "Sounder" for a book.

"Sounder" is a chapter book for nine to eleven-year-olds, depending on their reading level. The author is William H. Armstrong. This is an A one book. Thus, a Newbery Medal winner. It's not a thick book so it can be easily read in a week. The story is about a poor African-American boy living in the South. What happens to this boy and his dog, Sounder, stirs the reader. The boy's sharecropping father is taken off to jail. Sounder tries to jump in the sheriff's wagon to be with the father, but instead is shot by the sheriff. You keep reading and hoping Sounder will be okay. He survives, but loses an eye and is crippled. After all this he still has faith in human kindness. I have known some grade school kids who had to read this book for class. This isn't a bad idea. Not all kids have near perfect lives. Learning about the sorrows and prejudices that other kids face can make a child more emphatic to others plights.

Tomorrow there will a Father's Day arts and craft project.