Where the Red Fern Grows

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Where the Red Fern Grows is set in the Ozarks of Oklahoma during the Great Depression. What was life like in the Ozarks during the 1930s, and how can this knowledge help set the context for Billy’s experience in the novel?

Teaching Suggestion: You may consider providing brief context for the economic, environmental, and human causes of The Great Depression and its impact on already-struggling rural areas.

• This article from the Oklahoma Historical Society describes the impact of the Great Depression and the New Deal on Oklahoma.
• This Library of Congress link leads to a collection of photographs taken by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers in the New Deal. The collection shows photos that are specific to the Ozark region during the Great Depression.

2. There are many parallels between Billy’s story in Where the Red Fern Grows and author Wilson Rawls’s own childhood. How does an understanding of Wilson Rawls’s personal history help readers anticipate themes of the novel?

Teaching Suggestion: You might consider providing students with the guide’s major themes before exploring Wilson Rawls’s biography and encouraging students to make hypotheses about what they expect to see in the novel.

• This blog post by author Ryan Dennis describes the life of Wilson Rawls and the path that eventually led him to writing Where the Red Fern Grows.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Reflect on a bond you have had with an animal. This may be a pet, a wild animal you are particularly interested in, a fictional animal from a book or a movie, etc. What kind of emotional connection do you have with that animal? What does this animal mean to you?

Teaching Suggestion: Consider allowing students time for independent journaling before leading a discussion of the various relationships that exist between people and animals.