Author / Illustrator: Fred Gipson
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Major Awards: Newbery Honor
Age Group: 5th - 7th
Summary: A family has a ranch that Travis Coates, the oldest son, looks after for his mother and brother. He looks after it because his father is working away from home which means that Travis has a lot of responsibilities. While he was taking care of the ranch one day, a dog shows up out of nowhere and the family allows the dog to live with them. They gave it a name, "Old Yeller" because whenever he barks, it sounds like he is yelling. Surprisingly, Travis didn't like Old Yeller at first. However, he did grow fond of the old dog as it has helped the family multiple times. For example, it helped the family by saving the brother from bear attacks. As Travis was growing to love the dog, its owner came to find him in order to claim him back. The family tried to negotiate with the owner, and was able to keep it in the end. Not long after, though, Old Yeller gets attacked by a wolf and Travis comes to the conclusion that the best solution is to kill him as it will ultimately fall ill and die. At the end, Old Yeller had given birth to puppies with the neighbor's dog before its death. To deal with Travis' grief, he is given one of his puppies which helps him overcome Old Yeller's death.
Major Awards: Newbery Honor
Age Group: 5th - 7th
Summary: A family has a ranch that Travis Coates, the oldest son, looks after for his mother and brother. He looks after it because his father is working away from home which means that Travis has a lot of responsibilities. While he was taking care of the ranch one day, a dog shows up out of nowhere and the family allows the dog to live with them. They gave it a name, "Old Yeller" because whenever he barks, it sounds like he is yelling. Surprisingly, Travis didn't like Old Yeller at first. However, he did grow fond of the old dog as it has helped the family multiple times. For example, it helped the family by saving the brother from bear attacks. As Travis was growing to love the dog, its owner came to find him in order to claim him back. The family tried to negotiate with the owner, and was able to keep it in the end. Not long after, though, Old Yeller gets attacked by a wolf and Travis comes to the conclusion that the best solution is to kill him as it will ultimately fall ill and die. At the end, Old Yeller had given birth to puppies with the neighbor's dog before its death. To deal with Travis' grief, he is given one of his puppies which helps him overcome Old Yeller's death.
Evaluation & Comments:
I think this book would be an interesting one to use for teaching in the classroom. One way we can discuss the book is to have them connect the reading to their lives or other books they had read before. The teacher would have to provide them with sentence stems that students complete. Through this, students can demonstrate their understanding of the book. Another thing students can do to demonstrate understanding is to create a fake Facebook or Twitter page that shows the character's personality and motivation through their posts. Along the same lines, the teacher can also have the students create a playlist with school appropriate songs that show their interpretation of the themes and moods created by the story, that could be used in the movie version. Something more paper pencil is having students choose three or four parts of the book ( can be quotes)that they liked from the book and explain why they liked it.
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