Book Talk #1- Sounder

Book Talk #1- Sounder

            Sounders takes place in the 19^th century, but I think it specifically takes place at the beginning of the 19^th century before the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression because the family in the story is a poor and hungry, African American, sharecropper, southern family.  Sharecropping was one of the few agricultural jobs a black man could have after the Reconstruction Era of the Civil War.  The story itself is about the relationship between the boy and his father and the father’s dog named Sounder.  The story is told in 3^rd person mostly from the perspective of the boy and he seems very melancholy and serious.  You can tell in the story that the boy is not educated and is not literate and that is something that he wants to change. 

            The beginning of Sounder talks about the how hard life is for the family.  They are so poor they just eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast, which is cheap to fix.  Life was very hard for them but then life gets harder when the dad is arrested and convicted of stealing.  On the night the father was arrested by the local Sheriff and deputies, the dog, Sounder, tries to help the father but was shot by one of the deputies and ran away.  After losing his father and dog the boy goes to look for the Sounder but doesn’t find him. 

            The boy goes to see his father while he is in jail but the visit didn’t go the way the boy had hoped and his father told him not to come back.  While the father is in jail and working in a camp, the boy and mother take care of the dog and the boy befriends a teacher who takes him under his wing and teaches him to read.  A year later the father comes home.  The father is badly burned and deformed from an accident in the camp.  The family was finally reunited.  One night the father and Sounder go hunting and the family is torn apart once again by an accident.     

            Something that I found interesting was that Sounder was the only character that was given a name especially since the story was mostly told from the boy’s point of view.  I also noticed the boy grows up in the story.  He goes from being a timid uneducated boy to being an educated young man in a rather short period of time.  He loses a sense of innocence because he not only has to live without his father, and the dog temporarily, he goes and visits his father in jail which is something children have to do currently. But he over comes these challenges in life and at the same time he learns to read which is something he really wanted to do.  So even though the boy doesn’t have a name, his character becomes a bigger part of the story as he matures. 

            I think this would be a good book for students to read in a Social Studies class when you are talking about life of American families at the turn of the century.  You can compare life of African Americans, Native Americans and white men and women and see how they lived differently.  This book shows the transition between Reconstruction and the Great Depression in terms of African Americans.  Sounder is a quick read which will help to keep students motivated, but this would be appropriate for a 5^th – 7^th grade student.