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Big Red #1
Big Red
From the moment Danny sees the beautiful Irish setter, he knows Red is the dog for him. Fast and smart, strong and noble, Red is the only dog Danny wants by his side. Soon, neither boy nor dog can stand to be apart. Together Danny and Red face many dangers in the harsh Wintapi wilderness that they call home. But the greatest test of their courage and friendship will come from an enemy more cunning than any they've known before--a bear who is the undisputed king of the wilderness, a savage killer called Old Majesty.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1945
131 people are currently reading
5261 people want to read
About the author
Jim Kjelgaard
106 books164 followersan American author of young adult literature.
Born in New York City, New York, Jim Kjelgaard is the author of more than forty novels, the most famous of which is 1945's "Big Red." It sold 225,000 copies by 1956 and was made into a 1962 Walt Disney film with the same title, Big Red. His books were primarily about dogs and wild animals, often with animal protagonists and told from the animal's point of view.
Jim Kjelgaard committed suicide in 1959, after suffering for several years from chronic pain and depression.
- Wikipedia -
Born in New York City, New York, Jim Kjelgaard is the author of more than forty novels, the most famous of which is 1945's "Big Red." It sold 225,000 copies by 1956 and was made into a 1962 Walt Disney film with the same title, Big Red. His books were primarily about dogs and wild animals, often with animal protagonists and told from the animal's point of view.
Jim Kjelgaard committed suicide in 1959, after suffering for several years from chronic pain and depression.
- Wikipedia -
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 315 reviews
April 10, 2022
Today's Shabby Sunday share is Big Red. Every summer, a city near our home has a community garage sale where people donate things they no longer want. It’s a charitable sale for those less fortunate in the community. Years ago, they had boxes of old chapter books and classic stories from an elementary school. They must have pulled these books out of the basement because they were all old books that looked like they hadn’t been read in years. That’s where we found our copy of Big Red.
This paperback edition was published in 1980 by Bantam Books, but the first official publication was in 1945. This printing is 218-pages in length with twelve total chapters. Our copy has seen its better days; although, it’s still structurally sound. The pages have a slight yellow tinge. For the most part, the book is all text with only a few simple black and white illustrations every twenty pages or so.
The story follows Danny Pickett, a seventeen-year-old boy living in the Wintapi wilderness. Danny–like his father–is an avid outdoorsman. Both Danny and his father live in a cabin together and make a living off the land by hunting, trapping, fishing, and selling honey and pelts. They are poor, but they get by.
A wealthy cattleman named Mr. Haggin lives nearby, and it’s by the grace of this man that Danny and his father are permitted to live on the edge of his estate. Danny respects Mr. Haggin and does odd jobs every now and then for him. At Mr. Haggin’s house, Danny first sees the dog–an Irish Setter–silky red from head to toe. He’s struck by the dog the moment he sees him. Danny knows that he’s not like any other dog he’s ever known in his life.
Mr. Haggin’s eyes were suddenly gentle. “Do you like that dog, Danny?”
“I sort of took a fancy to him.”
“Forget him. He’d be lost in your woods, and wouldn’t be worth a whoop for any use you might
have for a dog.”
“Oh sure, sure. By the way, Mr. Haggin, what’s the money cost of a dog like that?”
Mr. Haggin mounted his horse. “I paid seven thousand dollars,” he said, and galloped away.
Over time, Danny gets to know this prize show dog he calls Red. Red isn’t just a beautiful dog; he’s intelligent, loyal, and strong. Danny wants to teach him the woods and have him as his companion hunting dog. Will Red measure up to be the quintessential dog that Danny believes him to be?
Reading this story with my kids was such a joy. Even though it’s been years since I read Big Red, this experience was like reading it for the first time. The author did a beautiful job with the storytelling. I found the descriptions lovely. You can tell that the author grew up in a similar landscape and situation to Danny.
“The spring advanced. Melted snow filled every little ditch and depression, and the swollen creeks surged over their banks into the meadows and forests around them. Then green grass showed, flowers bloomed, trees were bud-laden, and one day a belated flock of north-bound geese squawked over Stoney Lonesome on their strong-winged passage north. In the shallow little gulley where he had been tearing a log apart to get the white grubs that had burrowed into it, the huge bear raised his long head to watch them go. He licked another grub from its damp bed, and climbed ponderously out of the gulley.”
Big Red is an adventurous, coming-of-age story about a young man in the wilderness with his dog, but it’s so much more than that. This story demonstrates the love between a father and son and a boy and his dog. It also raises some thought-provoking questions: Do the young have more to learn from the old or is it the other way around? In Big Red, Danny and his father–like all people–have their way of thinking. They discover new ideas from one another, and they learn to show respect for one another. I’m a dog person, and I’m a country person, but it’s the relationships in this story that pulled me in.
“Why, there would be hardly anything worth while if it wasn’t for his father. That foolish quarrel over Red! Danny should have let him hunt varmints or anything else Ross wanted. If only he could talk to his father just once and tell him how sorry he was!"
Big Red is a children’s book but without a doubt, perfect for all ages. It’s undeniably a classic. If you enjoy outdoor adventure stories involving dogs, I highly recommend this book. We’ll be reading the next book Irish Red within the next few weeks.
This paperback edition was published in 1980 by Bantam Books, but the first official publication was in 1945. This printing is 218-pages in length with twelve total chapters. Our copy has seen its better days; although, it’s still structurally sound. The pages have a slight yellow tinge. For the most part, the book is all text with only a few simple black and white illustrations every twenty pages or so.
The story follows Danny Pickett, a seventeen-year-old boy living in the Wintapi wilderness. Danny–like his father–is an avid outdoorsman. Both Danny and his father live in a cabin together and make a living off the land by hunting, trapping, fishing, and selling honey and pelts. They are poor, but they get by.
A wealthy cattleman named Mr. Haggin lives nearby, and it’s by the grace of this man that Danny and his father are permitted to live on the edge of his estate. Danny respects Mr. Haggin and does odd jobs every now and then for him. At Mr. Haggin’s house, Danny first sees the dog–an Irish Setter–silky red from head to toe. He’s struck by the dog the moment he sees him. Danny knows that he’s not like any other dog he’s ever known in his life.
Mr. Haggin’s eyes were suddenly gentle. “Do you like that dog, Danny?”
“I sort of took a fancy to him.”
“Forget him. He’d be lost in your woods, and wouldn’t be worth a whoop for any use you might
have for a dog.”
“Oh sure, sure. By the way, Mr. Haggin, what’s the money cost of a dog like that?”
Mr. Haggin mounted his horse. “I paid seven thousand dollars,” he said, and galloped away.
Over time, Danny gets to know this prize show dog he calls Red. Red isn’t just a beautiful dog; he’s intelligent, loyal, and strong. Danny wants to teach him the woods and have him as his companion hunting dog. Will Red measure up to be the quintessential dog that Danny believes him to be?
Reading this story with my kids was such a joy. Even though it’s been years since I read Big Red, this experience was like reading it for the first time. The author did a beautiful job with the storytelling. I found the descriptions lovely. You can tell that the author grew up in a similar landscape and situation to Danny.
“The spring advanced. Melted snow filled every little ditch and depression, and the swollen creeks surged over their banks into the meadows and forests around them. Then green grass showed, flowers bloomed, trees were bud-laden, and one day a belated flock of north-bound geese squawked over Stoney Lonesome on their strong-winged passage north. In the shallow little gulley where he had been tearing a log apart to get the white grubs that had burrowed into it, the huge bear raised his long head to watch them go. He licked another grub from its damp bed, and climbed ponderously out of the gulley.”
Big Red is an adventurous, coming-of-age story about a young man in the wilderness with his dog, but it’s so much more than that. This story demonstrates the love between a father and son and a boy and his dog. It also raises some thought-provoking questions: Do the young have more to learn from the old or is it the other way around? In Big Red, Danny and his father–like all people–have their way of thinking. They discover new ideas from one another, and they learn to show respect for one another. I’m a dog person, and I’m a country person, but it’s the relationships in this story that pulled me in.
“Why, there would be hardly anything worth while if it wasn’t for his father. That foolish quarrel over Red! Danny should have let him hunt varmints or anything else Ross wanted. If only he could talk to his father just once and tell him how sorry he was!"
Big Red is a children’s book but without a doubt, perfect for all ages. It’s undeniably a classic. If you enjoy outdoor adventure stories involving dogs, I highly recommend this book. We’ll be reading the next book Irish Red within the next few weeks.
September 10, 2020
An Animal Story with a Happy Ending
I read this when I was a child and wanted to see if I still enjoyed it in the same way, but I didn’t. Still, it was an adventure story, and I couldn’t put it down.
One day Danny, age 18, went to visit his father’s landlord when a large red dog ran over to greet him. They immediately bonded. Danny went back home, and the next morcning Beg Red, the dog, was lying on his front steps. He took him home the long way, through the woods. Big Red saw a bear and chased after it. Unscathed, he returned, and they made it to Big Red’s home. The owner, seeing how they had bonded so well, allowed Danny to take Big Red home with him.
Big Red was a show dog, so his owner hoped that he would win first prize as best of his breed. I thought how frivolous it was to breed dogs for show, not that I am against having a purebred for a pet because I had one once, a border collie named Mocha.
When I was a kid I had a dog named Rex who I brought to the Pioneer Day Dog Show where he won Best Trick Dog two years in a row. Rex was a border collie mix that I brought home one day and was allowed to keep. I Just found him on the street. I thenbrought books home from the library on teaching your dog to do tricks and on obedience training. Rex was great at both.
The third year that we went to the the show, I heard a kid say, “It’s her again. She is going to win,” and he was so disappointed to see me. I brought Rex into the circle of bystanders and hopeful winners, but then a dog attacked Rex. While he wasn’t hurt, I didn’t think that either of us were in the mood to compete. We left to watch the parade and probably went to the park afterwards for a free meal before going home.
Rex used to go to the river with me, and we went for walks in the hills behind our house. We just had fun. He also walked to town with me and sat outside the store while I went into to buy an orange or cherry soda and candy bars.
Now Big Red couldn’t freely do these things because he was a show dog, a purebred Irish setter. But he did go into the woods with Danny, who made sure that he didn’t chase any squirrels or rabbits, and certainly no more bears. He didn’t want him to tangle with an animal and possibly get injured, or worse yet, killed by a bear. Big Red couldn’t get any marks on his body; he had to be perfect for the show. My dog Rex could never win at that kind of show since he was a mix, and he had a small chunk cut out of his tongue. I used to believe that he cut it on a tin can while rummaging through a garbage can for food when he was a stray.
I judged Red’s life by judging people who would want a dog for show. It was just like a Miss America pageant, I thought. I felt this way because I am older now and have different values.
Danny and his father were trappers as well, and if a varmint caused problems, such as killing farm animals as well as those that he had trapped for their fur, they would track that animal down, only Big Red couldn’t follow.
During my reading of this part of the book, I remembered how, as a kid, I thought nothing of trapping animals for their fur or even hunting them. I even got a book from the library on taxidermy. I had plans that never panned out, and for that I am grateful. Still, I understand hunting for food, but only if it is a necessity.
Back in 1989, I got another dog, the first dog I owned after Rex. I didn’t teach her to do tricks like having her jump over my back, etc. I did teach her to not chase deer and other animals. All I had to do was say, No! and she would stop in her tracks. Megan was her name, and she was a border collie/Aussie mix. I still miss her.
I had moved back to Paso Robles, CA by this time, and that is where I met my husband and her. I never thought to teach her many tricks, nor did I think of the Pioneer Day Dog Show that I believed was still being held. I just wanted her to be herself. Although, I admit, Rex loved to learn tricks, and Megan loved to learn to shake hands and learn obedience training. So, she could have won at the show if I had taken her and if it hadn't been just for kids. She was a winner to us as well as a trophy.
I read this when I was a child and wanted to see if I still enjoyed it in the same way, but I didn’t. Still, it was an adventure story, and I couldn’t put it down.
One day Danny, age 18, went to visit his father’s landlord when a large red dog ran over to greet him. They immediately bonded. Danny went back home, and the next morcning Beg Red, the dog, was lying on his front steps. He took him home the long way, through the woods. Big Red saw a bear and chased after it. Unscathed, he returned, and they made it to Big Red’s home. The owner, seeing how they had bonded so well, allowed Danny to take Big Red home with him.
Big Red was a show dog, so his owner hoped that he would win first prize as best of his breed. I thought how frivolous it was to breed dogs for show, not that I am against having a purebred for a pet because I had one once, a border collie named Mocha.
When I was a kid I had a dog named Rex who I brought to the Pioneer Day Dog Show where he won Best Trick Dog two years in a row. Rex was a border collie mix that I brought home one day and was allowed to keep. I Just found him on the street. I thenbrought books home from the library on teaching your dog to do tricks and on obedience training. Rex was great at both.
The third year that we went to the the show, I heard a kid say, “It’s her again. She is going to win,” and he was so disappointed to see me. I brought Rex into the circle of bystanders and hopeful winners, but then a dog attacked Rex. While he wasn’t hurt, I didn’t think that either of us were in the mood to compete. We left to watch the parade and probably went to the park afterwards for a free meal before going home.
Rex used to go to the river with me, and we went for walks in the hills behind our house. We just had fun. He also walked to town with me and sat outside the store while I went into to buy an orange or cherry soda and candy bars.
Now Big Red couldn’t freely do these things because he was a show dog, a purebred Irish setter. But he did go into the woods with Danny, who made sure that he didn’t chase any squirrels or rabbits, and certainly no more bears. He didn’t want him to tangle with an animal and possibly get injured, or worse yet, killed by a bear. Big Red couldn’t get any marks on his body; he had to be perfect for the show. My dog Rex could never win at that kind of show since he was a mix, and he had a small chunk cut out of his tongue. I used to believe that he cut it on a tin can while rummaging through a garbage can for food when he was a stray.
I judged Red’s life by judging people who would want a dog for show. It was just like a Miss America pageant, I thought. I felt this way because I am older now and have different values.
Danny and his father were trappers as well, and if a varmint caused problems, such as killing farm animals as well as those that he had trapped for their fur, they would track that animal down, only Big Red couldn’t follow.
During my reading of this part of the book, I remembered how, as a kid, I thought nothing of trapping animals for their fur or even hunting them. I even got a book from the library on taxidermy. I had plans that never panned out, and for that I am grateful. Still, I understand hunting for food, but only if it is a necessity.
Back in 1989, I got another dog, the first dog I owned after Rex. I didn’t teach her to do tricks like having her jump over my back, etc. I did teach her to not chase deer and other animals. All I had to do was say, No! and she would stop in her tracks. Megan was her name, and she was a border collie/Aussie mix. I still miss her.
I had moved back to Paso Robles, CA by this time, and that is where I met my husband and her. I never thought to teach her many tricks, nor did I think of the Pioneer Day Dog Show that I believed was still being held. I just wanted her to be herself. Although, I admit, Rex loved to learn tricks, and Megan loved to learn to shake hands and learn obedience training. So, she could have won at the show if I had taken her and if it hadn't been just for kids. She was a winner to us as well as a trophy.
October 27, 2018
First published seventy-three years and twenty-six days ago, this story is based in the Wintapi Forest, in the eastern part of the United States, a three-hour drive to New York City. There are mountains nearby, and Danny and his father, Ross Picket, live a simple life in a small, very simple one room cabin, with the only home remotely near belonging to Mr. Haggins, a much wealthier man, financially speaking. Haggins owns a large estate, and raises cattle and sheep, and keeps a stable of horses, and dogs, which include Big Red. This is where young Danny, who is seventeen as this story begins, first sees Big Red.
”Mr. Haggin’s carefully nurtured acres stretched as far as the eye could see. Thoroughbred cattle grazed in the elaborately fenced pastures, and blooded horses snorted in the paddocks. Mr. Haggin’s gray barns, big as all the other barns in the Wintapi put together, rose in the center of the estate and beside them were the six miniature mansions Mr. Haggin had built for the families of the six men who worked his farms. Mr. Haggin’s house, a huge, white-gabled one protectively surrounded by imported blue spruces, was some distance from all the rest. Danny eyed it, then forgot everything but the red dog that was coming toward him.”
“A shiny, silky red from nose to tail, the dog was trotting up the path Danny was walking down. His eyes were fixed on Danny, and his tail wagged gently a couple of times. Ten feet away he stood still, his finely chiseled head erect and his body rigid. Spellbound, Danny returned the dog’s gaze. He knew dogs, having owned and hunted with hounds since he was old enough to do anything. The red dog was not a hound—Danny knew vaguely that it was called an Irish setter—but never before had he seen any dog that revealed at first glance all the qualities a dog should have. Danny walked forward, and knelt to ruffle the red dog’s ears.”
“’Hi boy,’ he said. ‘How are you, Red?’”
Love at first sight. A boy and a dog.
I’ve shared my life with dogs, most years of my life I have had a dog, or two, and when I began my life, when I was first brought home, my days were spent on an Irish Setter. Technically, he was our family’s dog, but I was his as far as he was concerned, and while I have loved all the dogs I’ve shared my life with (and some that I haven’t shared my life with) the dog who raised me holds the first piece of my heart I ever gave away.
I am sure I read this as a child, or my older brother read it to me, I remembered it fondly but with no details, and so I’ve wanted to re-read it for some time.
This is a beautifully told story, a story of courage and a life and time when the dangers that faced us were more likely to be from nature, especially when they lived in a remote wilderness filled with foxes, fisher cats, and bears, than our fellow man, but it is also more than just that. An ode to a life well lived and intrinsic in that is a life lived with love, perhaps above all, the love of a dog.
Many thanks, once again, to the Public Library system, and the many Librarians that manage, organize and keep it running, for the loan of this book!
August 17, 2024
Aug 16, 2024 ~~ Doing some housekeeping on the Zapata Reading Club list. The first year or so of this project I did not add new read dates to some titles and I did not update the original reviews. I still won't be doing that, but I wanted to have the dates properly recorded.
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I thought when I began re-reading this book yesterday that I might change its star rating from 5 to 4. I had marked it 5 stars when I first joined GR and before I really understood how things worked here. But I've just finished the book and I'm leaving it with all 5 stars.
I have a soft spot for Kjelgaard and the way he is able to bring dogs, people, and Nature to vivid life. This story of Big Red and Danny is no different and I was caught up from the beginning. Would Danny be able to work with the beautiful dog? Would he understand the science behind the show ring? What will happen when the lovely Sheila MacGuire arrives? And then there's that bear.....who will win that little contest?
This is an outdoor book and should be read sprawled on your belly with the grass tickling your nose and little flying bugs landing on the page every so often, and the sun warming you as you follow Danny and Red through their woods.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I thought when I began re-reading this book yesterday that I might change its star rating from 5 to 4. I had marked it 5 stars when I first joined GR and before I really understood how things worked here. But I've just finished the book and I'm leaving it with all 5 stars.
I have a soft spot for Kjelgaard and the way he is able to bring dogs, people, and Nature to vivid life. This story of Big Red and Danny is no different and I was caught up from the beginning. Would Danny be able to work with the beautiful dog? Would he understand the science behind the show ring? What will happen when the lovely Sheila MacGuire arrives? And then there's that bear.....who will win that little contest?
This is an outdoor book and should be read sprawled on your belly with the grass tickling your nose and little flying bugs landing on the page every so often, and the sun warming you as you follow Danny and Red through their woods.
May 10, 2020
Jim Kjelgaard's Irish Setter books are the ultimate boy-and-his-dog adventure stories. Although it has been a very long time since I read them, I do remember that they completely enthralled me at the time, and captured my heart and imagination.
December 21, 2023
You know what I love about Jim Kjelgaard's books? The dogs in them don't die at the end. That shouldn't be a revolutionary concept, and yet, it sure seems to be. So many dog books broke my heart when I was a kid, and then I discovered Kjelgaard, and he became my hero.
Big Red is his most famous book, and it's quite the delight. There's lots of stuff about how to train a dog, how to survive in the woods, and how to win a dog show, which is all very wonderful. But the part I remember best from when I was a kid, and the part I couldn't wait to get to when I was reading this aloud to my own kids this fall, was the part where a wolverine comes down the chimney.
I am not making this up. A wolverine comes down the chimney and tries to kill the boy and the dog. It's so terrifying and horrible and thrilling. And, of course, the boy is basically unarmed and has to survive with his wits and almost no weapons of any sort. Because that is the kind of book I loved when I was a teenage girl!
Big Red is his most famous book, and it's quite the delight. There's lots of stuff about how to train a dog, how to survive in the woods, and how to win a dog show, which is all very wonderful. But the part I remember best from when I was a kid, and the part I couldn't wait to get to when I was reading this aloud to my own kids this fall, was the part where a wolverine comes down the chimney.
I am not making this up. A wolverine comes down the chimney and tries to kill the boy and the dog. It's so terrifying and horrible and thrilling. And, of course, the boy is basically unarmed and has to survive with his wits and almost no weapons of any sort. Because that is the kind of book I loved when I was a teenage girl!
March 26, 2018
3.5
I needed a story that was easy to read, yet held wonderful characters and a lovely story. This book fit. Dogs, a young man, and mountain forests. There was excitement, amusing moments, and plenty of heart. I had seen the movie, but it wasn't anything like the book. I loved Red, and really liked Danny and his father.
My only complaint were the times the whiteout was needed otherwise it would have been a 4 star book.
I needed a story that was easy to read, yet held wonderful characters and a lovely story. This book fit. Dogs, a young man, and mountain forests. There was excitement, amusing moments, and plenty of heart. I had seen the movie, but it wasn't anything like the book. I loved Red, and really liked Danny and his father.
My only complaint were the times the whiteout was needed otherwise it would have been a 4 star book.
November 21, 2018
Ummmm am I literally the only person who sees traces of eugenics and American exceptionalism throughout this whole book? Suggesting some types of "dogs" do need to be beaten to learn and that doing what one is "bred" for is the highest achievement. Honestly thought I was going to read these reviews and see a lot of critics but no one else seems to have read it from that perspective. I found it pretty disturbing.
May 28, 2007
Jim Kjelgaard really started my obsessive compulsive reading lifestyle. He was really the first author that I can vividly remember, at like 8 years old, going into a bookstore and blurting out to any employee "Do you have any Jim Kjelgaard books, I'll spell it for you..K-J-E-L-G-A-A-R-D" Great dog books too, by the way. Jack London lite.
May 4, 2016
So, we have a 17-year old hillbilly Danny Pickett, living in a shack with his father, Ross. They support themselves by hunting, fishing and trapping. Occasionally they do some odd jobs for the rich guy, Mr. Haggin, on whose estate they have been squatting for years. I'm guessing they're somewhere in Appalachia, although we're also told they're only 300 miles from New York City. Whatever, they live an idyllic life, albeit a bit on the rough side.
One day Danny goes to see Mr. Haggin and is greeted effusively by an Irish Setter, whom Danny calls Red. Red is a show dog, so has a fancy name, but Danny doesn't much cotton to such fanciness. Anyway, it's obvious to all that Red and Danny can't be separated, so Mr. Haggin hires Danny to be Red's caretaker and also, through osmosis mostly it seems, to learn to handle show dogs.
Danny's father, of course, thinks they should turn Red into a varmint dog, like his blue tick hounds. So, there's some tension there because everyone, save Ross, knows that a quality setter should be eschewing varmints in favor of birds. Also, there's tension in that a giant bear, Old Majesty, occasionally shows up in their valley to terrorize farm animals, people, and the creatures of the forest. Only Red, it seems, is not afraid of Old Majesty. So, mostly we have a story about a boy and his dog in the woods.
Along about 5th or 6th grade, I read this book and adored it. I was determined to get myself an Irish Setter. So, when I was allowed to get a new dog, a year or so after our sheltie, Jeanne, was run over by a laundry truck, I started calling people advertising Irish Setters. Well, the first one seemed "sort-of" ok, but then someone who had called before I had showed up and snagged the dog. The second person I called told me they were selling Irish Terriers? WTF? I thought (well, in those days, WTF? hadn't been coined). Oh well, I want a damn dog! So I got an Irish Terrier, who was the grand daughter of the legendary Ch. Wahoo Satellite, one of the few Irish Terriers to have ever won a Best in Show. Bridget wasn't show quality, but was a great pal. She had a daughter, by Ch. Ahtram Legacy, named Colleen. Colleen was also a great companion. Then, after almost 30 years of Irish Terriers, I ended up for some reason, with Golden Retrievers for about 25 years. Now, thanks to my daughter, I'm stuck a little Jug dog.
The above is all to say, I love dogs and have had a number of them. But sadly, none of them has ever come close to matching Big Red. He's a veritable paragon of dogdom, smart, quick to learn, loving and loyal to a fault, and so forth.
I think this is a book better suited to impressionable 10- or 11-year olds, than to jaded geezers. It was a fun enough read, but rather fanciful in its telling. No dog could possibly be so wonderful as Big Red. But, to his credit, Big Red wasn't a racist asshole like Lad a Dog. Then too, no 17-year old hill billy could ever be quite so worldly wise and manly as Danny Pickett. Still, it was an enjoyable adventure. After all, what's better for a dog lover and Eagle Scout than reading about a boy and his dog in the wilderness?
One day Danny goes to see Mr. Haggin and is greeted effusively by an Irish Setter, whom Danny calls Red. Red is a show dog, so has a fancy name, but Danny doesn't much cotton to such fanciness. Anyway, it's obvious to all that Red and Danny can't be separated, so Mr. Haggin hires Danny to be Red's caretaker and also, through osmosis mostly it seems, to learn to handle show dogs.
Danny's father, of course, thinks they should turn Red into a varmint dog, like his blue tick hounds. So, there's some tension there because everyone, save Ross, knows that a quality setter should be eschewing varmints in favor of birds. Also, there's tension in that a giant bear, Old Majesty, occasionally shows up in their valley to terrorize farm animals, people, and the creatures of the forest. Only Red, it seems, is not afraid of Old Majesty. So, mostly we have a story about a boy and his dog in the woods.
Along about 5th or 6th grade, I read this book and adored it. I was determined to get myself an Irish Setter. So, when I was allowed to get a new dog, a year or so after our sheltie, Jeanne, was run over by a laundry truck, I started calling people advertising Irish Setters. Well, the first one seemed "sort-of" ok, but then someone who had called before I had showed up and snagged the dog. The second person I called told me they were selling Irish Terriers? WTF? I thought (well, in those days, WTF? hadn't been coined). Oh well, I want a damn dog! So I got an Irish Terrier, who was the grand daughter of the legendary Ch. Wahoo Satellite, one of the few Irish Terriers to have ever won a Best in Show. Bridget wasn't show quality, but was a great pal. She had a daughter, by Ch. Ahtram Legacy, named Colleen. Colleen was also a great companion. Then, after almost 30 years of Irish Terriers, I ended up for some reason, with Golden Retrievers for about 25 years. Now, thanks to my daughter, I'm stuck a little Jug dog.
The above is all to say, I love dogs and have had a number of them. But sadly, none of them has ever come close to matching Big Red. He's a veritable paragon of dogdom, smart, quick to learn, loving and loyal to a fault, and so forth.
I think this is a book better suited to impressionable 10- or 11-year olds, than to jaded geezers. It was a fun enough read, but rather fanciful in its telling. No dog could possibly be so wonderful as Big Red. But, to his credit, Big Red wasn't a racist asshole like Lad a Dog. Then too, no 17-year old hill billy could ever be quite so worldly wise and manly as Danny Pickett. Still, it was an enjoyable adventure. After all, what's better for a dog lover and Eagle Scout than reading about a boy and his dog in the wilderness?
January 19, 2015
I read Big red because it looked very interesting and I like dogs. This book is very enjoying and I think that it is a perfect book for a freshman to read that likes outdoor stuff. This book was action packed and I didn't want to put it down.
In the beginning Danny is working for his boss Mr. Haggin. He finds a bull that was killed by a huge bear and then he sees the bear. His family has tried to kill this bear for years and he also wants to. After he told Mr. haggin about the bull he sees his dog named Big Red and he falls in love with this dog. Big Red is a show dog and was bought for seven thousand dollars.
Towards the end off the book Mr. Haggin gives Danny Big Red and then Danny finds a mate for Big Red so he can raise pups and then he can sell them for lots of money. The pups are also great hunting dogs and show dogs. This book was written in the Rocky Mountains and is written quite a few years ago. This book was very interesting and I hope many more students will read it and tell there friends to read it. I will also hope to read more books by Jim Kjelgaard.
In the beginning Danny is working for his boss Mr. Haggin. He finds a bull that was killed by a huge bear and then he sees the bear. His family has tried to kill this bear for years and he also wants to. After he told Mr. haggin about the bull he sees his dog named Big Red and he falls in love with this dog. Big Red is a show dog and was bought for seven thousand dollars.
Towards the end off the book Mr. Haggin gives Danny Big Red and then Danny finds a mate for Big Red so he can raise pups and then he can sell them for lots of money. The pups are also great hunting dogs and show dogs. This book was written in the Rocky Mountains and is written quite a few years ago. This book was very interesting and I hope many more students will read it and tell there friends to read it. I will also hope to read more books by Jim Kjelgaard.
September 24, 2014
Reading through this book I kept finding outdated ecological ideas. Finally I looked up the copyright and found it was published in 1945. No wonder its ideas about how a predator fits into an ecosystem are so out of step with modern research.
Such problems aside, the book is a good story of a boy and his dog. It has plenty of challenges and excitement. The ending is happy and lends itself to the sequels that followed.
Jim and his father are trappers. They earn their living trapping and hunting then selling pelts. The prices are shockingly little but realistic when the dates are taken into account.
The hardships of such a life are smoothed over. Some of the facts of trapping are similarly glossed over.
Being rural I could relate to much of what was in the book. It would be a good boy's book. But urban boys would have trouble as they have no experience to help them understand the setting or the experiences.
I did find the book an interesting read and plan to read the sequels.
Such problems aside, the book is a good story of a boy and his dog. It has plenty of challenges and excitement. The ending is happy and lends itself to the sequels that followed.
Jim and his father are trappers. They earn their living trapping and hunting then selling pelts. The prices are shockingly little but realistic when the dates are taken into account.
The hardships of such a life are smoothed over. Some of the facts of trapping are similarly glossed over.
Being rural I could relate to much of what was in the book. It would be a good boy's book. But urban boys would have trouble as they have no experience to help them understand the setting or the experiences.
I did find the book an interesting read and plan to read the sequels.
July 26, 2011
Read Kjelgaard's books when I was a kid and they were a formative influence. Indeed, here is a longer blog post I wrote up about the books (back when I was giving blogging a brief go):
I gave my nephew a set of four books this last Christmas: Big Red, Irish Red, Outlaw Red (a trilogy of Irish Setter stories) and Stormy, all by Jim Kjelgaard, and then for his ninth birthday, I found two more (the books are mostly out-of-print) Snow Dog and Wild Trek. He’s loved the books, as I figured he would, him being a kid who has spent much of his life pretending he was a dog, or some other animal. Then, after he was done with them, he lent them back to me, and after over 25 years away, I happily immersed myself back in Kjelgaard’s universe.
As a kid, I loved two authors above all others – Jim Kjelgaard and Jack London. Kjelgaard came first – I began reading him when I was about eight, and I read and reread him for the next couple of years until I found The Call of the Wild and White Fang and all of Jack London’s short stories. Kjelgaard is definitely a young adult writer, with story lines that are straightforward, lacking the difficult layering of themes. He writes about young men, mostly all trappers, and their dogs, and his characters are all men. The only woman in the six above mentioned books appears in Big Red, and she is cold, distant and gone in just a few short pages. However, as a kid, I wasn’t worried about the feminist implications of the lack of women. I cared instead about these men and their dogs, because despite the lack of women, or maybe because of it, these stories were unreservedly love stories of men in love with their dogs, and whose dogs love them. These were love stories I could relate to and understand. I read Kjelgaard knowing that he would never disappoint me like the Little House books did when Laura got married and betrayed our tomboy sisterhood. By reading these books I was given a chance to dream a life without bounds, outside of the construct of traditional relationships – of marriage, career and kids. Reading these books solidified my aspirations to be resourceful, tough, brave, loyal and possessing intimate knowledge of the land where I lived. Reading those books taught me how to love the world, because that is the other thing the men loved besides their dogs – they loved their land.
These men were trappers, yes, killing hundreds of animals for their fur every year, but they were also mountain men who loved and lived in the woods. I was troubled by this seeming incongruity when I was a kid, having read of the suffering of animals in these traps, but it was by this trapping that these men ventured into the woods, and still today it is hunters, those men and women who go into the woods, fields and marshes to hunt venison, duck, turkey and quail – that know the land in a way that few of us will ever know. This is something that cannot be overlooked.
In college I went on a NOLS natural history backpacking trip in the Absoraka and Beartooth ranges in Wyoming and Montana, and our primary purpose was to backpack for 28 days, learning the ecology of the mountain environments. However, one of our early lessons was also how to fly fish. Hiking, sleeping and cooking in small groups of four, I volunteered to carry my group’s flyrod everyday, happily accepting the extra weight of it’s PVC pipe carrying case, because that meant that I had first dibs of using it when we got into camp at night. We were graded for the skills we learned that month, and the only skill I “failed,” was cooking, because every night as my group prepped our meal, I was at a trout stream, fishing us our dinner, and my hiking group had fish to eat almost every night, a happy addition of protein to our backwoods, carbohydrate-heavy diets. And while I loved every day of hiking through those mountains, and marveled at the mountain lakes and the sweep of tundra and pine forest, what I remember most distinctly was the trout streams. I remember the lake where I caught my first trout (a small brook trout), the stream where I first caught a rainbow, and the stream I caught my first cutthroat. And of these creeks and brooks and occasional river, I know those waterways with an intimacy unlike anything I have for trails I walked. By acting as the predator, I saw the river deeply – I noticed where the small eddies were as the brook made a slight bend, I saw the hole behind the rock, the overhanging tree cooling the water, the place where the creek pinched together and the small falls that followed.
Of course it is possible to see deeply without killing. Birders seek out their “prey,” with the same intensity as hunters, and a person just returning to the same spot again and again and simply being still in it will see and know that place greater than anyone else. Farmers know their land, and kids know their neighborhoods. Indeed, I worked as a sea kayaking guide for years, and got to know almost one hundred rivers and tidal creeks with varying levels of intimacy. But I know the rivers I fished even a little bit better than the rest, attuned to the snags that slow the water, and holes that cool, and “rocky” oyster bottoms that draw rockfish and bluefish. You do not need to hunt to see, but my point is that by hunting and fishing, one gets the chance to gaze upon the world in a way that the vast majority of people miss. Some of the wilderness’ greatest advocates were and are hunters. Aldo Leopold, the founding father of sustainable landuse was a hunter, Audobon hunted, and Rick Bass, the man who loves his Yaak Valley so deeply that I worry for his health, writes about hunting with as much love as Jim Kjelgaard once did.
The nature writer, David Gessner wrote a blog post recently titled “Mr. Hopeless” (http://billanddavescocktailhour.com/m... about his dislike of purist environmentalists, and he makes a wonderful point. He recently wrote his Green Manifesto, with the objective:
To describe the ways that my own life, and the lives of some people I admire, are connected to the natural world, and the benefits that come from that connection, benefits that are not always obvious.
And in his manifesto, he celebrates environmental hypocrisy. He writes about hope being key, even when faced with the crisis of climate change. And he also argues for the necessity of hypocrisy. As he writes:
Another part is about admitting our own hypocrisy but still fighting on. The best summary of this last sentiment was given by . . . Dan Driscoll, the eco planner who for two decades has fought to clean up the Charles River, adding greenways and native plantings. One day, while we were paddling down that same river, Dan said this to me:
“We nature lovers are hypocrites, of course. We are all hypocrites. None of us are consistent. The problem is that we let that fact stop us. We worry that if we fight for nature, people will say, ‘But you drive a car,’ or, ‘You fly a lot,’ or, ‘You’re a consumer, too.’ And that stops us in our tracks. It’s almost as if admitting that we are hypocrites lets people off the hook.”
I pulled my paddle out of the water to listen.
“What we need are more hypocrites,” he said. “We need hypocrites who aren’t afraid of admitting it but will still fight for the environment. We don’t need some sort of pure movement run by pure people. We need hypocrites!”
We humans are part of this world, and if we are going to save this world it will not be through perfectionism, but by living in our sloppy imperfect ways, but living with a goal of making things better rather than worse. We can strive for consciousness in our living, being aware of our watershed, biking more and eating as locally as we can afford to (but without self righteousness), and lessening our carbon footprint on the world. We can turn off lights and air conditioners, we can reuse and recycle. We can upcycle (a subject for a future blog). But we also must actually LOVE this world in order to save it. We must be allowed to live in it, to hike in it, to hunt and eat from it. We have to be able to live without the constant guilt of imperfection, of feeling that we can never be good enough to save the world on our own, so why even try. It is like going on a diet and then when you slip up, giving up entirely and eating whatever being punitive with ourselves for failure. Perfection gets us nowhere, but love, love in all its forms, love of place, of meat, of vegetables, of dogs, of fathers, of wives and husbands, partners and friends, love for our children, actual real love – that is a power that is real.
One of the reasons I loved London’s books, and Kjelgaard, is the description of the food. Kjelgaard has his men cook breakfasts of pancakes and dinner’s of pork chops, or venison, or brook trout. He seasons his food with butter, salt and pepper, or in the case of Wild Trek, food is seasoned simply by the hunger of survival. Eating to survive, eating as fuel, was also a revelation to me as a child living a comfortable suburban life. The narrator of London’s story “To Build A Fire,” has a bacon sandwhich tucked inside his shirt to keep it warm. London describes it as such:
"As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon."
The simplicity of that bacon sandwich was wonderful to me, as was the idea of eating with such true, real hunger. Of carrying a sandwich next to your skin to keep it from freezing – the using of food as real fuel for oneself. I even wrote a short story built around the idea of describing such a sandwich. The shopping list that Link Stevens gives in Snow Dog is for:
"fifty pounds of sugar, two hundred flour, fifty each of rice and beans, thirty of raisins, maybe thirty of dehydrated apricots and peaches. You know what I need: about six hundred pounds all told."
And with that he put in his grub stake order for the next year, everything else he ate he would catch or kill. It wasn’t the gourmet quality of the food, but rather the simplicity of it – the idea that you could quantify your food in such a way and survive on so little, and that food was necessary for survival, as fuel rather than as indulgence.
I am teaching “To Build A Fire” this summer as part of a short story class. I sat down to dinner to reread it and prepare some teaching notes, but was distracted by the meal I prepared of lamb chops and sweet corn. Living alone for the summer, I quickly forgot my manners and tore into meat and corn with my hands and teeth, the juices and butter dripping down my chin and hands. It was the best meal I’ve eaten in ages, made out of five ingredients, lamb, salt, basil (from my herb garden), corn and butter. The dog I am watching this summer dozed through this all, sleeping a few feet from my table, ready to stand and follow me if he sensed movement, but otherwise not concerned with my lip-smacking. I didn’t finish reading “To Build A Fire” during dinner, I’ll have to do that later tonight. But I think my meal was as fine a tribute to Kjelgaard and London as I could have ever conceived. And getting back outside, into the world, and actively loving the world, is an even greater tribute.
I gave my nephew a set of four books this last Christmas: Big Red, Irish Red, Outlaw Red (a trilogy of Irish Setter stories) and Stormy, all by Jim Kjelgaard, and then for his ninth birthday, I found two more (the books are mostly out-of-print) Snow Dog and Wild Trek. He’s loved the books, as I figured he would, him being a kid who has spent much of his life pretending he was a dog, or some other animal. Then, after he was done with them, he lent them back to me, and after over 25 years away, I happily immersed myself back in Kjelgaard’s universe.
As a kid, I loved two authors above all others – Jim Kjelgaard and Jack London. Kjelgaard came first – I began reading him when I was about eight, and I read and reread him for the next couple of years until I found The Call of the Wild and White Fang and all of Jack London’s short stories. Kjelgaard is definitely a young adult writer, with story lines that are straightforward, lacking the difficult layering of themes. He writes about young men, mostly all trappers, and their dogs, and his characters are all men. The only woman in the six above mentioned books appears in Big Red, and she is cold, distant and gone in just a few short pages. However, as a kid, I wasn’t worried about the feminist implications of the lack of women. I cared instead about these men and their dogs, because despite the lack of women, or maybe because of it, these stories were unreservedly love stories of men in love with their dogs, and whose dogs love them. These were love stories I could relate to and understand. I read Kjelgaard knowing that he would never disappoint me like the Little House books did when Laura got married and betrayed our tomboy sisterhood. By reading these books I was given a chance to dream a life without bounds, outside of the construct of traditional relationships – of marriage, career and kids. Reading these books solidified my aspirations to be resourceful, tough, brave, loyal and possessing intimate knowledge of the land where I lived. Reading those books taught me how to love the world, because that is the other thing the men loved besides their dogs – they loved their land.
These men were trappers, yes, killing hundreds of animals for their fur every year, but they were also mountain men who loved and lived in the woods. I was troubled by this seeming incongruity when I was a kid, having read of the suffering of animals in these traps, but it was by this trapping that these men ventured into the woods, and still today it is hunters, those men and women who go into the woods, fields and marshes to hunt venison, duck, turkey and quail – that know the land in a way that few of us will ever know. This is something that cannot be overlooked.
In college I went on a NOLS natural history backpacking trip in the Absoraka and Beartooth ranges in Wyoming and Montana, and our primary purpose was to backpack for 28 days, learning the ecology of the mountain environments. However, one of our early lessons was also how to fly fish. Hiking, sleeping and cooking in small groups of four, I volunteered to carry my group’s flyrod everyday, happily accepting the extra weight of it’s PVC pipe carrying case, because that meant that I had first dibs of using it when we got into camp at night. We were graded for the skills we learned that month, and the only skill I “failed,” was cooking, because every night as my group prepped our meal, I was at a trout stream, fishing us our dinner, and my hiking group had fish to eat almost every night, a happy addition of protein to our backwoods, carbohydrate-heavy diets. And while I loved every day of hiking through those mountains, and marveled at the mountain lakes and the sweep of tundra and pine forest, what I remember most distinctly was the trout streams. I remember the lake where I caught my first trout (a small brook trout), the stream where I first caught a rainbow, and the stream I caught my first cutthroat. And of these creeks and brooks and occasional river, I know those waterways with an intimacy unlike anything I have for trails I walked. By acting as the predator, I saw the river deeply – I noticed where the small eddies were as the brook made a slight bend, I saw the hole behind the rock, the overhanging tree cooling the water, the place where the creek pinched together and the small falls that followed.
Of course it is possible to see deeply without killing. Birders seek out their “prey,” with the same intensity as hunters, and a person just returning to the same spot again and again and simply being still in it will see and know that place greater than anyone else. Farmers know their land, and kids know their neighborhoods. Indeed, I worked as a sea kayaking guide for years, and got to know almost one hundred rivers and tidal creeks with varying levels of intimacy. But I know the rivers I fished even a little bit better than the rest, attuned to the snags that slow the water, and holes that cool, and “rocky” oyster bottoms that draw rockfish and bluefish. You do not need to hunt to see, but my point is that by hunting and fishing, one gets the chance to gaze upon the world in a way that the vast majority of people miss. Some of the wilderness’ greatest advocates were and are hunters. Aldo Leopold, the founding father of sustainable landuse was a hunter, Audobon hunted, and Rick Bass, the man who loves his Yaak Valley so deeply that I worry for his health, writes about hunting with as much love as Jim Kjelgaard once did.
The nature writer, David Gessner wrote a blog post recently titled “Mr. Hopeless” (http://billanddavescocktailhour.com/m... about his dislike of purist environmentalists, and he makes a wonderful point. He recently wrote his Green Manifesto, with the objective:
To describe the ways that my own life, and the lives of some people I admire, are connected to the natural world, and the benefits that come from that connection, benefits that are not always obvious.
And in his manifesto, he celebrates environmental hypocrisy. He writes about hope being key, even when faced with the crisis of climate change. And he also argues for the necessity of hypocrisy. As he writes:
Another part is about admitting our own hypocrisy but still fighting on. The best summary of this last sentiment was given by . . . Dan Driscoll, the eco planner who for two decades has fought to clean up the Charles River, adding greenways and native plantings. One day, while we were paddling down that same river, Dan said this to me:
“We nature lovers are hypocrites, of course. We are all hypocrites. None of us are consistent. The problem is that we let that fact stop us. We worry that if we fight for nature, people will say, ‘But you drive a car,’ or, ‘You fly a lot,’ or, ‘You’re a consumer, too.’ And that stops us in our tracks. It’s almost as if admitting that we are hypocrites lets people off the hook.”
I pulled my paddle out of the water to listen.
“What we need are more hypocrites,” he said. “We need hypocrites who aren’t afraid of admitting it but will still fight for the environment. We don’t need some sort of pure movement run by pure people. We need hypocrites!”
We humans are part of this world, and if we are going to save this world it will not be through perfectionism, but by living in our sloppy imperfect ways, but living with a goal of making things better rather than worse. We can strive for consciousness in our living, being aware of our watershed, biking more and eating as locally as we can afford to (but without self righteousness), and lessening our carbon footprint on the world. We can turn off lights and air conditioners, we can reuse and recycle. We can upcycle (a subject for a future blog). But we also must actually LOVE this world in order to save it. We must be allowed to live in it, to hike in it, to hunt and eat from it. We have to be able to live without the constant guilt of imperfection, of feeling that we can never be good enough to save the world on our own, so why even try. It is like going on a diet and then when you slip up, giving up entirely and eating whatever being punitive with ourselves for failure. Perfection gets us nowhere, but love, love in all its forms, love of place, of meat, of vegetables, of dogs, of fathers, of wives and husbands, partners and friends, love for our children, actual real love – that is a power that is real.
One of the reasons I loved London’s books, and Kjelgaard, is the description of the food. Kjelgaard has his men cook breakfasts of pancakes and dinner’s of pork chops, or venison, or brook trout. He seasons his food with butter, salt and pepper, or in the case of Wild Trek, food is seasoned simply by the hunger of survival. Eating to survive, eating as fuel, was also a revelation to me as a child living a comfortable suburban life. The narrator of London’s story “To Build A Fire,” has a bacon sandwhich tucked inside his shirt to keep it warm. London describes it as such:
"As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon."
The simplicity of that bacon sandwich was wonderful to me, as was the idea of eating with such true, real hunger. Of carrying a sandwich next to your skin to keep it from freezing – the using of food as real fuel for oneself. I even wrote a short story built around the idea of describing such a sandwich. The shopping list that Link Stevens gives in Snow Dog is for:
"fifty pounds of sugar, two hundred flour, fifty each of rice and beans, thirty of raisins, maybe thirty of dehydrated apricots and peaches. You know what I need: about six hundred pounds all told."
And with that he put in his grub stake order for the next year, everything else he ate he would catch or kill. It wasn’t the gourmet quality of the food, but rather the simplicity of it – the idea that you could quantify your food in such a way and survive on so little, and that food was necessary for survival, as fuel rather than as indulgence.
I am teaching “To Build A Fire” this summer as part of a short story class. I sat down to dinner to reread it and prepare some teaching notes, but was distracted by the meal I prepared of lamb chops and sweet corn. Living alone for the summer, I quickly forgot my manners and tore into meat and corn with my hands and teeth, the juices and butter dripping down my chin and hands. It was the best meal I’ve eaten in ages, made out of five ingredients, lamb, salt, basil (from my herb garden), corn and butter. The dog I am watching this summer dozed through this all, sleeping a few feet from my table, ready to stand and follow me if he sensed movement, but otherwise not concerned with my lip-smacking. I didn’t finish reading “To Build A Fire” during dinner, I’ll have to do that later tonight. But I think my meal was as fine a tribute to Kjelgaard and London as I could have ever conceived. And getting back outside, into the world, and actively loving the world, is an even greater tribute.
April 13, 2016
This book has a copyright of 1945 (mine is a 4th printing dated 1962) and was written back when "Scholastic Books" had some real substance instead of the silly stuff I see now when I go to the Book Fairs at my grandsons' schools. My youngest grandson (3rd grade) and I chose this to read together because he's crazy about dogs. This is about an Irish Setter (a Championship show dog worth $7,000 back in the '50s) named Champion Sylvester's Boy. Mr. Haggin, his owner, trusts "Red's" care and training (as a partridge dog) to a young backwoods boy named Danny (at the same time, Mr. Haggin is teaching Danny about 'showing' and breeding fine show dogs).
The story revolves around life in the backwoods (traplines, hunting, surviving), training dogs for different specialties (Danny's father Ross raises and trains hounds to hunt 'varmints' -- fishers, rabbits, wildcats, etc.), dog shows, and the love between Red and Danny.
The book isn't an easy read. There were times that my grandson and I had to go over parts so that I could explain exactly what had happened and why (okay, and it was about showing & breeding, so the first time I read the word "bitch" I thought he and his brother would fall off the sofa with their mouths open, looking horrified -- until I explained that it was just what 'dog people' called a female dog) but he stayed fascinated throughout. Even when I teared up during the last chapter and could barely read aloud because I was crying. (I do that a lot at the really good parts...)
This is a book definitely worth searching for and sharing with any child or young person who loves dogs (or just a good story.)
The story revolves around life in the backwoods (traplines, hunting, surviving), training dogs for different specialties (Danny's father Ross raises and trains hounds to hunt 'varmints' -- fishers, rabbits, wildcats, etc.), dog shows, and the love between Red and Danny.
The book isn't an easy read. There were times that my grandson and I had to go over parts so that I could explain exactly what had happened and why (okay, and it was about showing & breeding, so the first time I read the word "bitch" I thought he and his brother would fall off the sofa with their mouths open, looking horrified -- until I explained that it was just what 'dog people' called a female dog) but he stayed fascinated throughout. Even when I teared up during the last chapter and could barely read aloud because I was crying. (I do that a lot at the really good parts...)
This is a book definitely worth searching for and sharing with any child or young person who loves dogs (or just a good story.)
November 25, 2023
I remember enjoying this a lot more as a kid, but then, I didn't recall the details well upon rereading. It's still a good book, but for the bulk of it, it meanders, seeking a plot because its protagonists are already essentially perfect.
Related to this, there's that "je ne sais quois" about Red. What makes him so special? Danny is convinced at first sight, but most readers require more than "he just is."
The climax is also a bit of an anti-climax. Don't get me wrong: Old Majesty is introduced well, and as a reader, you're aware that that challenge is coming. But after the wolverine (I will not be using that other name, which was likely historically accurate, but nevertheless), where it's even noted how much more terrifying than a bear it is, it's not as nerve-wracking as intended.
Not to mention, the abrupt violent turn (side note: I do think Kjelgaard forgot about the Picketts' cow) to an otherwise relatively tame narrative is jarring. Likely on purpose, but not in any way that allows you to feel the tragedy, which makes the violence feel superfluous, there for shock value alone, and Kjelgaard is much better than that.
Related to this, there's that "je ne sais quois" about Red. What makes him so special? Danny is convinced at first sight, but most readers require more than "he just is."
The climax is also a bit of an anti-climax. Don't get me wrong: Old Majesty is introduced well, and as a reader, you're aware that that challenge is coming. But after the wolverine (I will not be using that other name, which was likely historically accurate, but nevertheless), where it's even noted how much more terrifying than a bear it is, it's not as nerve-wracking as intended.
Not to mention, the abrupt violent turn (side note: I do think Kjelgaard forgot about the Picketts' cow) to an otherwise relatively tame narrative is jarring. Likely on purpose, but not in any way that allows you to feel the tragedy, which makes the violence feel superfluous, there for shock value alone, and Kjelgaard is much better than that.
Read
August 11, 2011I loved this book as a child and reread it many times. I loved the thrilling adventures from the "smaller" ones like his encounter with the wolverine to the main conflict with the savage bear. Oooo, I remember being so creeped out by the bear! Danny sitting in the dark, hearing the bear's claws scraping on the rock and watching Big Red's hackles rise . . . brrrrr!
IMO, if kids are looking to be scared and feel chills up and down their spine, this is a lot healthier than some of the truly twisted stuff being marketed for children today. Of course, thanks to this book and all those Drama in Real Life Reader's Digest stories about grizzly bear attacks, I am absolutely terrified of bears! Thankfully I live in Detroit now. Not too many bears around here.
IMO, if kids are looking to be scared and feel chills up and down their spine, this is a lot healthier than some of the truly twisted stuff being marketed for children today. Of course, thanks to this book and all those Drama in Real Life Reader's Digest stories about grizzly bear attacks, I am absolutely terrified of bears! Thankfully I live in Detroit now. Not too many bears around here.
November 21, 2015
I rated this when I first joined Goodreads, but I don't remember why I only gave it three stars. I seems to me that I enjoyed it more than that. I've recently picked up a used copy of the book, so sooner or later I'll get around to rereading it and give it a proper review. I'm really stumped that Kjelgaard seems to be largely out of print--I loved the few of his books I encountered growing up, and can't see why kids today shouldn't enjoy them, too.
February 23, 2014
Wham I read this book more than sixty-five years ago, I was so impressed that a BOOK could touch my heart to this extent that I became an avid reader for my life. This book will always be important to me
June 23, 2021
Big Red was a very good book. My first from Jim Kjelgaard but I don’t think will be my last. The dog was believably good. The best part was imagining what it would be like to live a life mostly outdoors.
The book leaves a lot to be discussed with a small child. Reading with my boys was my favorite thing, but unfortunately, no grandchildren yet. I know some adults would quibble at some points, or try to apply different standards based on our current time. I see it as conversation topics (maybe after you have enjoyed the book for it’s own sake.) Do bears have rage in the way described? Was it ok for them to hunt and trap animals? Overall, it would be fun to contrast our usual life in a suburb to that of a life out in the woods.
I am going to rate this book 5 stars, but because I read so many books on dogs I would like to compare how it rates against other classics. This book is different from other classic dog books, like each dog is different, but in the spirit of what dog books to prioritize your time reading, I would put Old Yeller, Lad: A dog, and Lassie ahead of it, but best to read all of those classics.
I would like to point out one quote from the book that I thought was an excellent discussion topic. Someone is talking to the boy about dog shows. In it I thought the author was expressing a fine ideal for dog shows. In real life, AKC dog shows put too much on the looks of a dog, and virtually nothing on the other qualities of the breed. And I know from a brief brush into that world with a Newfoundland I had once, winning dog shows are only partly the dog, and the rest is grooming, handling, and politics, but maybe anyone reading this review can just look to the sentiment this passage speaks to and appreciate the thought.
“A dog show is illustrative of man’s achievement, and blue ribbon is more than a bit of silk. It’s a mark, Danny, one that never can be erased. The dog that wins it will not die. If we send Boy to the show, and he comes back as best of breed, then that’s something for all future dog lovers and dog owners to build on. Don’t you see? A hundred years from now someone may stand on this very spot with a fine Irish setter, and he’ll trace it lineage back to some other very fine setter, perhaps to Boy. And he will know that he has built on what competent men have declared to be the very best. He will know also that he, too, can go one step nearer the perfection that men must and will have in all things. It did not start with us, Danny, but with the first man who ever dreamed of an Irish setter. All we’re trying to do is advance one step farther and Boy’s ribbon, if he wins one, will simply be proof that we succeeded.” - Jim Kjelgaard, 'Big Red'
The book leaves a lot to be discussed with a small child. Reading with my boys was my favorite thing, but unfortunately, no grandchildren yet. I know some adults would quibble at some points, or try to apply different standards based on our current time. I see it as conversation topics (maybe after you have enjoyed the book for it’s own sake.) Do bears have rage in the way described? Was it ok for them to hunt and trap animals? Overall, it would be fun to contrast our usual life in a suburb to that of a life out in the woods.
I am going to rate this book 5 stars, but because I read so many books on dogs I would like to compare how it rates against other classics. This book is different from other classic dog books, like each dog is different, but in the spirit of what dog books to prioritize your time reading, I would put Old Yeller, Lad: A dog, and Lassie ahead of it, but best to read all of those classics.
I would like to point out one quote from the book that I thought was an excellent discussion topic. Someone is talking to the boy about dog shows. In it I thought the author was expressing a fine ideal for dog shows. In real life, AKC dog shows put too much on the looks of a dog, and virtually nothing on the other qualities of the breed. And I know from a brief brush into that world with a Newfoundland I had once, winning dog shows are only partly the dog, and the rest is grooming, handling, and politics, but maybe anyone reading this review can just look to the sentiment this passage speaks to and appreciate the thought.
“A dog show is illustrative of man’s achievement, and blue ribbon is more than a bit of silk. It’s a mark, Danny, one that never can be erased. The dog that wins it will not die. If we send Boy to the show, and he comes back as best of breed, then that’s something for all future dog lovers and dog owners to build on. Don’t you see? A hundred years from now someone may stand on this very spot with a fine Irish setter, and he’ll trace it lineage back to some other very fine setter, perhaps to Boy. And he will know that he has built on what competent men have declared to be the very best. He will know also that he, too, can go one step nearer the perfection that men must and will have in all things. It did not start with us, Danny, but with the first man who ever dreamed of an Irish setter. All we’re trying to do is advance one step farther and Boy’s ribbon, if he wins one, will simply be proof that we succeeded.” - Jim Kjelgaard, 'Big Red'
October 17, 2016
They were in the woods out in the country, at night, tracking Ole Majesty the bear. It wasn't long until they started hearing sounds. In the book Big Red, most of the pages talk about Danny and Red, but there are many other characters. This book shows that doing the right thing is best.
This book shows that by doing the right thing, not necessarily the beneficial thing, happiness can be achieved. Mr. Haggin doesn't want to get rid of Red, his show dog, but he will with a discounted price just for Danny. Mr. Haggin said, “That's a reasonable enough offer, and I'll accept it, Danny”. Mr. Haggin is selling Red cheap to Danny because he knows Danny and Red have a bond that nobody can break. Mr. Haggin knows he is losing his best show dog, but he knows down in his heart, it is the right thing to do.
This book also shows that if a boy loves a dog, they cannot be separated. Mr. Haggin loves his show dog, Red, but Danny loves him more more and the dog chooses which guy he likes best. “Danny! he panted. Wake up! That dog of Mr. Huggins, the one you were talking about, it followed you home.” This shows that if the dog feels treated the best with the this guy, he will follow him wherever he goes.
A dog will choose who he/she loves more no matter what. In the book it also shows that doing the right thing for the dog is best and that a dog’s love is as strong as human’s love. The book shows two different things, the dog will choose love over anything, and doing the right thing for the dog is the best thing you can do. The way to a dog’s heart is to love him and take care of him the best you can.
This book shows that by doing the right thing, not necessarily the beneficial thing, happiness can be achieved. Mr. Haggin doesn't want to get rid of Red, his show dog, but he will with a discounted price just for Danny. Mr. Haggin said, “That's a reasonable enough offer, and I'll accept it, Danny”. Mr. Haggin is selling Red cheap to Danny because he knows Danny and Red have a bond that nobody can break. Mr. Haggin knows he is losing his best show dog, but he knows down in his heart, it is the right thing to do.
This book also shows that if a boy loves a dog, they cannot be separated. Mr. Haggin loves his show dog, Red, but Danny loves him more more and the dog chooses which guy he likes best. “Danny! he panted. Wake up! That dog of Mr. Huggins, the one you were talking about, it followed you home.” This shows that if the dog feels treated the best with the this guy, he will follow him wherever he goes.
A dog will choose who he/she loves more no matter what. In the book it also shows that doing the right thing for the dog is best and that a dog’s love is as strong as human’s love. The book shows two different things, the dog will choose love over anything, and doing the right thing for the dog is the best thing you can do. The way to a dog’s heart is to love him and take care of him the best you can.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 17, 2016
In the first quarter we had to choose a book, I chose this one, the lexile level is 910. This is the first book that I have read by Jim Kjelgaard. This is his most well known book he has written. He lived for 69 years and wrote 31 books. I picked this book because I really enjoy dogs and adventure stories. I`m also the kind of person who looks at the cover and gets drawn in. The book is called big red because a boy named Danny was given a dog named red. He is a Irish setter who is in dog shows, and is worth a lot of money. The teaches the dog how to hunt and they become best friends. Then red meets a girl dog but red has to fight off a bear. Red gets injured but has 5 puppies in the end.
The book is fairly happy throw out the story in the beginning the book is happy the boy gets a dog and teaches him to hunt but as the book goes on things get sadder pets die and so does live stock. People Get hurt and feelings get hurt also. There were family moments and friends get brought together. Neighbors lend hands and money. Bears feel the wrath and hounds will be missed.
Overall the book was ok. I enjoyed the family moments and the times that Danny and Red chased the bear around the woods. I did not like that all of Danny's hounds died and that his mule died too. I wouldn't recommend this book too little kids because there is a lot of death in it and also they really get into the death and explain how they die and it sticks into your brain. But if there are other people who enjoy animal stories of fun and adventure this would be the perfect book for you too read.
The book is fairly happy throw out the story in the beginning the book is happy the boy gets a dog and teaches him to hunt but as the book goes on things get sadder pets die and so does live stock. People Get hurt and feelings get hurt also. There were family moments and friends get brought together. Neighbors lend hands and money. Bears feel the wrath and hounds will be missed.
Overall the book was ok. I enjoyed the family moments and the times that Danny and Red chased the bear around the woods. I did not like that all of Danny's hounds died and that his mule died too. I wouldn't recommend this book too little kids because there is a lot of death in it and also they really get into the death and explain how they die and it sticks into your brain. But if there are other people who enjoy animal stories of fun and adventure this would be the perfect book for you too read.
November 13, 2015
Big Red a wonderful book about a young man and his dog, a champion Irish Setter. Although Danny doesn't own him, it is his job to take care of Red. The book was written by Jim Kjelgaard in 1945, so the reader must picture a time when life was a little simpler. Ross is a trapper and they live without running water and electricity in a small shack in the woods.
Having been written in the 1940's, this book does not look at the world that we see it today. Danny has grown up with a trapper for a father, and he is a trapper himself. Danny is often with a gun, especially when he takes Red out partridge hunting. They often find themselves in trouble either with a bear, a wolverine, or just the hardship of life living out in the wilderness.
I remember reading this book when I was in junior high school and loving it. Picking it up again 20 years, and many books later, I find that I still really enjoyed the story. Mr. Kjelgaard nailed the lingo of the poor, county folk and weaves a tale of a boy and his dog that no reader will ever forget. The relationship with Danny and Red is wonderful, and any boy could only hope to have a dog that loves him as much. I can remember wishing I had a dog like Big Red. Now I want him all over again.
Big Red is a enticing story for all ages, but especially young readers who love the wilderness and all of its dangers.
I rated this book an 8½ out of 10.
Having been written in the 1940's, this book does not look at the world that we see it today. Danny has grown up with a trapper for a father, and he is a trapper himself. Danny is often with a gun, especially when he takes Red out partridge hunting. They often find themselves in trouble either with a bear, a wolverine, or just the hardship of life living out in the wilderness.
I remember reading this book when I was in junior high school and loving it. Picking it up again 20 years, and many books later, I find that I still really enjoyed the story. Mr. Kjelgaard nailed the lingo of the poor, county folk and weaves a tale of a boy and his dog that no reader will ever forget. The relationship with Danny and Red is wonderful, and any boy could only hope to have a dog that loves him as much. I can remember wishing I had a dog like Big Red. Now I want him all over again.
Big Red is a enticing story for all ages, but especially young readers who love the wilderness and all of its dangers.
I rated this book an 8½ out of 10.
March 4, 2020
I loved the Big Red books as a kid but hadn't read any for decades. When this 75-year edition hit my radar I had to get it and see if there is any magic left. And there is! I'm reminded of how much I loved traveling with Danny and Red through the woods, living in a cabin, all of it. Snowshoes! Re-reading this and London's The Call of the Wild I can see just how formative these early reads were to me and the worlds I retreat to in my head, when I can't retreat in the physical world, and for that I love them.
Not that there aren't problems reading this book now. There are essentially no women to be found in the story. The only one who appears does so briefly and does little more than flirt with being a villain. The divisions of class and privilege are acute as well. Finally, all the predators in the blessed Wintapi woods are evil things—that horrible wolverine!—that must be destroyed to protect their prey, defenseless unless defended by these brave men of the woods. These are certainly attitudes I don't agree with now! But it was a curious glimpse of an attitude of the time.
I'm still giving it five stars. Three for the story, one for the glorious illustrations, and another one for being there for me when I needed it to be so, so many years ago ... and then finding its way to me again. Thanks, Jim. And thank you, Red!
Not that there aren't problems reading this book now. There are essentially no women to be found in the story. The only one who appears does so briefly and does little more than flirt with being a villain. The divisions of class and privilege are acute as well. Finally, all the predators in the blessed Wintapi woods are evil things—that horrible wolverine!—that must be destroyed to protect their prey, defenseless unless defended by these brave men of the woods. These are certainly attitudes I don't agree with now! But it was a curious glimpse of an attitude of the time.
I'm still giving it five stars. Three for the story, one for the glorious illustrations, and another one for being there for me when I needed it to be so, so many years ago ... and then finding its way to me again. Thanks, Jim. And thank you, Red!
February 24, 2018
“Big Red” was a champion Irish Setter; from the moment Danny saw him, he knew Red would be his dog. Danny was just a lowly trapper, a boy who knew more about the ways of the woods than fancy kennels and dog shows. But when the two meet for the first time, they quickly become inseparable and Red’s owner entrusts him to Danny’s care. In the harsh wilderness that Danny calls home, Red proves to be a reliable, loyal companion…even when faced with a legendary enemy!
Mr. Kjelgaard is the prolific author of more than forty novels for young men, and it seems as if I’ve done him a disservice by waiting so long to include him on this list. Although he was born over a hundred years ago and many of his books have now gone out of print, a good number are still available in retail shops today. “Big Red” was even made into a Disney movie, a sure sign of its powerful and moving story. These animal-focused books were some of my favorites growing up, so do yourself a favor and start searching for some of Mr. Kjelgarrd’s writing yourself!
Mr. Kjelgaard is the prolific author of more than forty novels for young men, and it seems as if I’ve done him a disservice by waiting so long to include him on this list. Although he was born over a hundred years ago and many of his books have now gone out of print, a good number are still available in retail shops today. “Big Red” was even made into a Disney movie, a sure sign of its powerful and moving story. These animal-focused books were some of my favorites growing up, so do yourself a favor and start searching for some of Mr. Kjelgarrd’s writing yourself!
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April 10, 2020I was delighted to find a copy of Big Red in a used bookstore while on vacation recently. The copy was old and took me right back to the library where I spent so much time as a kid. As I reread this, it was so familiar but from my current vantage point also really disappointing. The world here and in so many of the books I read in my childhood is a masculine place. I hadn't thought of it before, but I spent an inordinate amount of time reading books with similar settings and similar characters and in every one of them women and girls are outsiders or objects of disdain. No wonder I wanted so badly to be a boy. The story is fine. It was just a sad experience to suddenly realize the lessons I'd been taking in when I was a girl wishing for a loyal dog like Red.
February 15, 2010
This is about a Big Red dog and a boy who really loves this dog and lives in a place I cannot remember the name. The dog is a show dog but he can tell he is a good hunt dog. Eventually he gets hired to be a trainer, but the dog's leg is injured and will not be able to show any longer. He turns him into a partridge dog. There is also a bear named Old Majesty because no dog has been able to run him down. Big Red is there to challenge him and they defeat him in the night. I really liked this book because because it shows a lot of old-fashioned adventure. There are more books written by the same author and I can't wait to read them.
July 23, 2015
1945 debut of the Young Adult Big Red series. I remembered reading this book over 50 years ago and rereading it found that it was as engrossing and enjoyable as the first time around. Kjelgaard wrote a number of books featuring an animal, usually a dog.
YA - "Big Red" was a champion Irish setter; Danny a young trapper who knew more about the ways of varmints and hounds than of the world of fancy kennels and dog shows. But Red's owner knew a good dog man when he saw one, and entrusted Red to Danny's training.
YA - "Big Red" was a champion Irish setter; Danny a young trapper who knew more about the ways of varmints and hounds than of the world of fancy kennels and dog shows. But Red's owner knew a good dog man when he saw one, and entrusted Red to Danny's training.
October 20, 2019
This book is also very popular in the Balkans, as I have it in cyrillic. Recently I found it among old books and I am rereading it again. Interesting thing is that my dog‚s name is Danny, my niece called it that. It should have been her dog. This one is orange, mix breed of some hungarian pointer and bird chaser.
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August 5, 2016I started reading these dog books when I was in third grade. There is no substitute for a child's love of their pets and I wanted one more than anything. I loved all of Jim Kjelgaards books and highly encourage anyone to read them.
August 25, 2015
A wonderful book! Jim Kjelgaard's style of describing and writing about the woods is unparalleled by any other boy's author. I loved this book-should have read it sooner! It was funny, tense, exciting, intriguing, and more.
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