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Where the Red Fern Grows

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  • It Was His Sled: Old Dan and Little Ann die.
  • Narm: In the movie, Rubin's death when he trips and lands on his axe looks very silly because of the cartoonish "Doh!" sound he makes.
  • Squick:
    • Old Dan's injuries. His stomach is torn open by a mountain lion. He survives and tries to follow Billy home, only to have his intestines spill out of the open wound and tangle in some brush. A sobbing Billy is forced to clean dirt and leaves off his faithful pet's intestines and stuff them back into the poor dog's body cavity. This book was written for ten-year-olds.
    • A close runner-up is Rubin's death, which is shockingly graphic and prolonged for a children's book: while threatening Billy and his dogs with a hatchet, Rubin trips and impales himself on the blade. He begs Billy to take the hatchet out. Billy obliges, wiggling the blade from the other boy's stomach. A "bubble of blood" works its way out of Rubin's mouth. It bursts, and Rubin drops dead.
  • Values Dissonance: Rubin, a child, goes to Billy’s grandpa’s store to buy chewing tobacco. Grandpa asks if this is for Rubin’s father and not himself, and when Rubin lies about it being for his father, Grandpa approves the sale. While this was legal in both the year the novel takes place and the year the novel was published in, tobacco sales to anyone under 18 were banned in 1988 with the legal age being raised to 21 in 2020.

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