Where the Red Fern Grows remembered as a traumatic childhood read

Honorable Mentions: A Farewell to Arms (blegh) and, much earlier, Where The Red Fern Grows. I think subjecting children to multiple “your dog must die so you can become a man!” books is borderline criminal.

I feel like there’s a separate category for books that traumatized you out of nowhere as a kid looking at you, Where The Red Fern Grows

Where the Red Fern Grows in fifth grade made me terrified of being disemboweled.

When we talk about the loss of the monoculture it includes Where the Red Fern Grows. I swear everyone of a certain age had to read it and everyone was traumatized in the exact same way. How could you not be. Honestly it gave me a little comfort when my dog died tho.

I had to teach Where the Red Fern Grows and I hated it. So I approached it that way - told the kids I hated it but we had to do this. The argumentative kids pushed back by telling me what was good about it. I suspect that maybe we should be teaching things we hate.

I read where the red fern grows, a prayer for owen meany (boring until the very end lol that really turns it all around but only for joke material) that stupid one about rich people in the 1920s with the green light, and all sorts of inspid "american classics"

Reading Where the red fern grows, old yeller, bridge to terebithia changes you

I still have flashbacks about that damn book. I never know where my keys are, but I remember exact fucking phrases from Where The Red Fern Grows.

i hope they do and I hope they turn on Land Before Time its one of the first movies I recall seeing in school on one of these that wasn't also something like Old Yeller, Where the red fern grows, etc... books we were supposed to read first ya know?

Sobbing in a classroom full of other 11-12 year olds while first reading and then being forced to watch the movie of Where the Red Fern Grows was traumatic and I’m still not over it.

"Where the red fern grows" was supposed to be a Very Important young adult fiction book but to this day I don't remember whether they shoot the dog in that one or "old yeller." None of my business.

Both of those. But add To Kill a Mockingbird, Where the Red Fern Grows, and The Scarlet Warrior. We had to read some really jacked up books as kids.

We have exactly the same opinions in this area. In fact I even JUST responded that on another post: Catcher in the Rye and The Scarlet Letter for me, though Where the Red Fern Grows is close and I considered adding it. World literature is so much more enjoyable than American :/

"That's enough screen time watching RETURN TO OZ, how about you wind down by reading WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS"

Idk about least favorite, but the most traumatic was certainly Where the Red Fern Grows.