Connecting with Teachers, Part II

These e-mails should speak for themselves. Finding student art might be tricky.

Connecting with Teachers

I feel bold. Contacting Israel Sanchez was one thing, but contacting a teacher who posted a Where the Red Fern Grows art project online four years ago for her middle school class is even scarier. Why'd I do it? It's cool to see how professional artists have visually reacted to Where the Red Fern Grows, but I want to see how the target audience uses art to express their interaction with the text. So, I need to go to the source. Here's the e-mail I wrote:

Mrs. Braxton,

 

I am an English Teaching major at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. I am currently taking a class called Writing Literary Criticism in the Digital Age, and I'm doing a project (via my blog) on visual art responses to Where the Red Fern Grows and how they tend to more closely convey the emotions experienced while interacting with the novel than do written responses.

 

While researching the topic, I stumbled upon your website. I recognize it is from 2007, and perhaps a lot has changed since then, but I was wondering if you have any examples of student art based on the book that I could see. With the appropriate permission and citation, I would love to display some of these pieces on my blog for my classmates and other scholars to see.

 

The project you designed for Where the Red Fern Grows looks wonderful. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

 

Sincerely,

 

Amy Whitaker

I'll probably use almost the exact same e-mail (with minor necessary changes, of course) to contact other instructors who have used art as a way to explore Where the Red Fern Grows with their students. Hopefully I'll hear back from someone soon.

Ekphrasis: Exactly the Opposite of My Last Few Posts

In my creative writing class, our assignment for today was to write a poem based on a work of art. Lately I have been posting a lot about using visual art to convey emotions experienced through reading literature, but I had to do the exact opposite to fulfill this assignment, which has led me to this conclusion: Art understands art, and using different mediums to explore the same concept provides exponentially greater depth to the concept at hand. Anyway, here is my poem and the piece of art off of which I based it.

Norman Rockwell, "Freedom of Religion"

A Freedom

It is the second.

God comes second to our Voice.

But this choice is the heaven in the wrinkled hand.

This choice wrinkles the rosary

and smooths the conscience

and rocks the mind of the dark-haired man

who is highly logical, with his

hand on his chin and

no rosary in his hand.

Are those wrinkles evidence

of your devotion?

Emotion wrinkles the age spots that dictate

the course of action that runs

according to your conscience.

God-fearing protestant,

head bowed in humility,

eyes on the heaven of her wrinkled hands;

God-fearing Catholic,

head raised in confidence,

eyes on the heaven of her three-man God

who makes all men free.

Each has hands.

Each has a choice that

comes second to our Voice.

It is heaven and it smooths and rocks and wrinkles.

What We See Isn't What We Say

Compare this:

"Where the Red Fern Grows" by Marilyn Hoff Hansen

Idaho Fall, ID Library

And this:

"The blue tick hound was like the Pritchards, mean and ugly" by Israel Sanchez

To this:

caroleodell: Watching "Where the Red Fern Grows" and trying not to cry. <Impossible>

 

and:

 

Bananaelf: Where the red fern grows is such a good book. I admit it I cried :)

 

and:

 

D_Penderhughes: Haven't read a good one since six grade (Where the Red Fern Grows) great book....sad rite lol

 

I daresay that the visual representations are much more demonstrative of the emotional intensity and depth of Where the Red Fern Grows. To almost everyone with whom I discuss the book (which is a lot of people these days), I mentioned, "It is incredible. I tear up all the time." But really, who cares? It's a sad story, but it is so much more than that.  Sometimes what we see and what we feel when we engage with the book is impossible to put into words. Sometimes images just do it better. I don't know my exact direction, but I want to look more into this. Why is other art so much more capable of describing literature than literature itself.

 

Illustrator Israel Sanchez's Response

Here is Mr. Sanchez's response to my e-mail. I am incredibly impressed by his generosity and his understanding of the importance of collaboration. What a wonderful, professional artist.

"Championship Coon Hunt to Be Held," by Israel Sanchez

I thought I'd go ahead and provide just a taste of Mr. Sanchez's work. I'll provide more of his art and analyze the significance of his artistic contribution to (or remix of) Where the Red Fern Grows in posts to come.

Some May Call It Corny...

I call it classic. It is lines like these, as dramatic as they are, that make Where the Red Fern Grows such an emotional read for me:

"Men," said Mr. Kyle, "people have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't.  I may be wrong, but I call it love--the deepest kind of love." -p. 184 Where the Red Fern Grows

If you don't get a little knot in your throat from reading that, you probably don't know Old Dan and Little Anne. Or maybe you're just more of a cat person.

Using Art to Interpret Art

**Spoiler Alert** If you don't already know the story of Where the Red Fern Grows, don't read this blog; go read the book!

 Sprinkle Butts by Canopener Sally, 2009

While exploring others' blogs, reviews, and other forms of commentary on Where the Red Fern Grows, I've been a bit frustrated by their redundancy. Almost everything I've read goes something like this, "What a sad book." Then, the elaboration on that statement forks in one of two directions: "It is absolutely beautiful; what a wonderful tale of love between a boy and his dogs" or "I'm so sick of sad endings. Why do the dogs always have to die?"

This frustrates me because these words are completely insufficient in conveying the complexity of the emotions that I experience as I read the novel. In fact, even my own commentary on it would be insufficient. I could write an essay singing praise to the story (and probably admitting that it's really not especially well-written), but even my most flowery language could not recreate the emotions that readers encounter.

Art is different, though. Particularly visual art. As I looked at Israel Sanchez's art inspired by Where the Red Fern Grows, I saw an interaction with the text beyond the surface reaction of "Wow, that was sad." I would even say that Sanchez enriches the novel with his drawings because he legitimizes the simplicity of the diction and syntax by creating something beautiful out of it. This is what I want to see! I want to see that others feel the way I do about Where the Red Fern Grows. That's why I have been asking everyone I encounter if they have read the book, then interrogating them when I discover that they have. That's why I plan on reading the final heart-wrenching chapters of the book out loud with a reading buddy. I want to know that others feel what I feel.

Surely Mr. Sanchez isn't the only individual who has created visual art in response to Where the Red Fern Grows. In fact, there are a couple of movie adaptations of the book that I intend to view and analyze in the context of an art form. I want to find art inspired by the novel. I'll ask teachers for student work. I'll Google search until my eyes twitch. I want to know that I am not alone in my deep love for this book, and I feel that visual art holds the key to this quest.