The tale looks at a poor, black sharecropper family in the South.

Hardships are relentless yet they do not conquer the family, and in this there lies hope. This is how prose should always be! Words that clutter and all that is unnecessary are removed. '… there was no price that could be put on Sounder’s voice… It filled up the night and made music as though the branches of all the trees were being pulled across silver strings.'Ī classic worthy to be classified as such. It’s a story that will make you gulp a time or two, but there’s also that glimmer of hope that makes this such an endearing and memorable little book. The boy learns some tough life lessons – some from his devoted mother and his loyal dog, and some on his own. 'The boy liked it when she told her stories.

He took solace in the stories his mother told him, and he yearned for books of his own. Aside from the dog of course, I also loved the boy’s desire to learn to read. There are plenty of themes to explore here for both young and old readers – loyalty, faith, and determination to name a few. Though the title of the book points to the dog as the main character, it really is much more a coming of age story of the young, unnamed son of this loving, hard-working family. They struggle to get by on sharecropping and hunting. The story revolves around a poor, African-American family living in the Deep South. I suspect I would have to some extent at least. I have to wonder if I would have felt the same overwhelming sense of loneliness I felt reading this now. I’m not sure why I didn’t read it as a child – I certainly read my fair share of animal books. 'I had a father and a dog named Sounder…'īelieve it or not, this was my first time reading this classic Newbery award-winning book.

Sounder book