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Our Price: $3.95
Product Details
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| Shipping Weight: |
0.50 |
| Author(s): |
Bradley Viner B.Vet.Med MRCVS |
| Vendor: |
BARRON'S |
| Publisher: |
Barron's Educational Series |
| Published: |
01 March, 1999 |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0764110152 |
| Store Code: |
7672 |
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Description: All About Your Rabbit (Viner)
Genre: Modern fiction; Vermont; Lifestyles - Farm Life & Ranch Life; Farm life; Children's Books/Ages 9-12 Fiction; Social Situations - Adolescence; Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9); Social Issues - Adolescence; Pigs; Readers - Beginner; Juvenile Fiction / Readers / Beginner; Fathers and sons; Fiction; Children's 9-12 - Fiction - General;
Average Review: 5 stars
Review: Beautiful, sometimes painful, but hey, so is life. Even for kids. : I read this book when I twelve. It was not assigned reading from school; my aunt had a copy, and I helped myself. When I finished, I gave my aunt back her book and never read it again. I didn't have to. It was a part of me. I lived the days of the story with Robert. Yes, some are country-slow, but they are richly described and absorbing, even when relating trivialities. (Think "To Kill a Mockingbird".) I was horrified (as was Robert, the boy who is the main character) at the bloody images of the dog and weasel, but what *stayed* with me afterwards was the remorse of the dog's owner, and his declaration that, conventional wisdom be damned, he would never "weasel" a dog again. A clear lesson in self-determination in the face of tradition, more forceful because it was a grown man making the mistake and painfully learning from it. Robert's visceral reaction to his pet being violently bred made him more real in my eyes, more vulnerable, and his bitter sense of filial obligation in cooperating with the process made me empathize even more. It's a tricky, sometimes powerless place, being that young. But interwoven through the plainly portrayed harshness and casual brutality of rural poverty is the still beauty and serenity of a farm family in the 30's. The quiet father, who butchers hogs by hand, carves his son a whistle with the greatest care. I don't know what the target age for readers of this story is. I have seven and nine year old daughters. I won't give it to them yet, but I think in two or three years I'll be adding it to their library. I was actually shopping for a copy to give to a grown-up friend. We had been talking about books that had made us cry.
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