The Yearling

I read this book a few years ago when I was in my twenties. I loved it. The writing is descriptive yet moves the story along. It's quite immersive. I love the characters, all flawed in their own ways yet loveable. You want them to be their best selves. Some meet that, some do not. This is a beautiful book about growing up. A cousin of mine had read it in middle school and HATED how it ends. Thinking it over, I admitted I might not have liked it at that age. Reading it as an adult, I think one can appreciate the message more. That isn't to say a kid couldn't love it. But we adults have gone through the process of childhood to adulthood, which is the driving message of this book. This is not a "Disney-ending" type of book. Look at the ISBN and ISBN13 numbers for the individual copies and get the Reader's Digest copy if you can! I did and it is stunning with gilding on the cover and colorful illustrations.

An incomparable story of growth and survival in the most difficult conditions. The Yearling, set in the scrubland of northern Florida a couple of decades after the Civil War, is the story of the Baxter family: little "Penny" Baxter, the father, a saintly figure who is wise, understanding, kind, brave, dutiful, stoic; Ory, the mother, whose essential goodness has been buried to some degree by endless toil and the death of several babies; and Jody, who is about 12 when the story begins, a good-natured sprite for whom nature is benevolent and everything is to be explored. The Baxters live some 15 miles from the nearest town and four miles from their nearest neighbors, the Forresters, a family of massive sons who are variously good hearted and murderous drunks. In this environment, the little Baxter family scratches out its existence. Two themes predominate: the loss of childhood innocence and Implacable Nature. The latter is depicted in a variety of ways: a legendary maurauding bear that is seemingly impossible to kill; a pack of hungry wolves several dozen strong; a flood that destroys everything in its path and leaves the plague in its wake; a terrible poisonous snake that threatens the life of one of the characters. In this unforgiving environment, Penny forges ahead at all times, hunting and farming to provide for his little brood, rarely at a loss despite the continual setbacks that afflict "Baxter's Island," the small territory that the family owns. It's not all harshness, however. Moments of beauty break through at intervals, particularly when father and son are off on a leisurely hunt. There is often a great reverence shown for flowers, trees, waterways, birds, animals, and the landscape as a whole. A lovely character named Fodder-wing (of the Forrester clan) has a whole backwoods menagerie, one that young Jody would duplicate were it not for opposition from his mother, who knows all too well the trouble that animals can cause once they have grown to maturity. The consolation prize for Jody is Flag, a fawn that he claims after its mother has been killed. Jody loves Flag as much as any 12-year-old boy in the world today loves his dog--much more, really, since it is the only thing in the world that is exclusively his. Over the course of a year, Jody lives through all the terrors that nature--and, sometimes, man--can inflict and prepares, unknowingly, to eventually take over Penny's role as provider for the family. In the opening chapter, Jody has a particularly fine time off on his own, in the woods, and when it is over he cannot sleep because "a mark was on him from the day's delight, so that all his life, when April was a thin green and the flavor of rain was on his tongue, an old wound would throb and a nostalgia would fill him for something he could not quite remember." It is the last full day of his childhood innocence. By the end, when events have taken their difficult course, it is Penny who must counsel Jody and explain how he wa

I'm a 7th generation Floridian though not a Cracker. Cracker's in the Olden Times lived on the edge pretty much like the Baxter's did in this 1870s tale. Life in the Florida "scrub" was always difficult and always a challenge. Sugar-sand, pines,and palmettos. Crackers existed by hunting, foraging, fishing, theft, and farming enough corn to take care of their most basic needs. Killing a deer who eats your corn was the reality, killing a bear who slaughters your calf was the reality. Killing a neighbor who poached your hog was the reality. Because these kinds of insults to your welfare could not be tolerated, and Crackers had no luxuries or slack to draw upon when emergencies came along. Root hog! or die! This is what the book is about: Making the transformation from a child-like innocence of life, to a mature acceptance of the harsh realities of living. Many adults never make the change. Rawlings elevates and enobles the Baxters somewhat; in reality they would have been coarse and crude and unsympathetic characters, hardened by a life of hard-times. But the book is about becoming an adult and setting aside childish things and ways. Excellent writing and absorbing story.

Every time someone refers to Children's literature as a genre less worthwhile than general fiction or Children's authors as second-class writers, I bring up this book. The Yearling was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.The Yearling is a coming of age book set in the hard-scrabble scrub of Florida around the turn of the century. It is filled with the embarrassment and delight felt by a 12-year-old boy named Jody Baxter. One minute, Jody whirls faster and faster, arms held straight from his shoulders like a water-turkey's wings, until he becomes dizzy and drops to the ground, and then the next, he longs to follow his father, mix with men, and learn their ways.The Florida in this story is as much frontier as was the Wild West. This is a Florida unimagined by all those children who visit Orlando. This is a Florida inhabited by panthers that have cubs with blue spots, by bears that walk upright down the road like men, and by whooping cranes that dance cotillions in the marshes. This is a Florida where one's nearest neighbor lives four miles away, and a family has to work constantly to have enough food to survive another winter.Jody and each of his parents face these hardships differently. The story begins on a day when Jody is just a boy, addled with April and dizzy with Spring. He is the youngest and only surviving Baxter child. Jody thrived when one frail baby after another had sickened and died, almost as fast as they came. Jody's mother seems to have given "all she had of love and care and interest to those others." Jody's father is "a bulwark for the boy against the mother's sharpness.""Leave him kick up his heels and run away," the father thinks. "Leave him build his flutter-mills. The day'll come, he'll not even care to."Jody forgets his work and makes mistakes but his father covers for him. The boy's only problem seems to be loneliness, but even that is eased when his parents allow him to keep an orphaned fawn. The fawn and the boy grow up, becoming yearlings together. By the end of one year, Jody has sat up all night at his best friend's wake, been beaten for helping another friend against three bullies, become enemies with his neighbors over their burning an old woman's home, and tried to run away only to realize there is nowhere else he wants to be. He learns love and disappointment, as well as the fallibility of his father. Jody learns that life is "powerful fine, but 'tain't easy." And knowing all this, Jody enters manhood, leaving childhood. However,"A mark was on him from [that first April] day's delight, so that all his life, when April was a thin green and the flavor of rain was on his tongue, an old wound would throb and a nostalgia would fill him for something he could not quite remember."Note on reading level classification:While this book is listed as a Young Adult Reading Level book, I read the book when I was in the fifth grade and would recommend it to children of that age level or above. While a certain a

This is one of the best books I've ever read; the characters are vivid, the story is engrossing, the depiction of life in a remote rural area is authentic. But even though the relationship between a young boy and his pet deer plays a primary role this book does not strike me as being a "children's" book. It is lengthy and contains adult themes more suitable for a book meant for more mature readers. Death, extreme hardship, starvation, attempted murder...this a kiddy story? I dismissed reading this book years ago because I thought, oh well, the story of a boy and his deer, ho hum, not interested. Well, this book has MUCH more depth than that. The review by younger readers who proclaim this book "boring" are not old enough to appreciate it. I would recommend this book to anyone mature enough to understands it's appeal and deeper meaning.

This classic novel was written by an author who wrote it at her home a few miles south of Gainesville (in Cross Creek, Florida) and it won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. It is about life in rural central Florida in the second half of the 19th century, being centered around a boy (Jody Baxter), his family, and his pet fawn (Flag). Throughout the novel, the reader sees a boy growing up and having to face some tough decisions. We also learn much about the natural history, environment, folk remedies and beliefs, and culture of rural Florida. We also learn how precarious one's existence is out in the wild. Jody's father, Penny Baxter, has to kill a doe in order to use a folk remedy for a snake bite, not knowing that there is a little fawn nearby. Jody keeps the fawn to raise and to have as a friend. But, as the fawn grows older, problems arise. The author based her main characters loosely (very loosely) on a rural family she knew living in central Florida. Contrary to most reports, this family did not live in Cross Creek. They had a small place deep in the woods in the center of what is now the Ocala National Forest. I decided to see if I could find that site in the late 1980s. It turned out not be difficult at all. Armed with a map of the National Forest, I went on a hike (on some beautiful trails) and found the place. Nothing remains of the house. However, the family burial plot is still there, as are the graves of most of the members of the family. Unfortunately, it is sad to report that a number of the headstones have been stolen. Some of the stones referred to Civil War veterans. As you probably know, such stones draw very good prices on the "black market." The Forest Service had signs posted to warn people against stealing items but, being deep in the woods, they were taken anyway. I'm certain that the people who took the stones have no idea of their literary significance. Perhaps one day the Forest Service or some historical organization will replace the stones, but with all the cutbacks in funding, it'll probably be a long time before that happens.