Saturday, April 23, 2011

Call of the Wild / Jack London / 172 pp

I read this book for the first time in third grade and loved it. However, when my third grade teacher read an excerpt of it to the class from a "taste of great literature" book, he stopped reading the excerpt due to violent content. Re-reading this book, I still love it, but realize just how gritty of a book this is.

Buck, a dog, is kidnapped from home and sold as a sled dog in Alaska. London paints a bleak and brutal reality. Dogs are beaten into obedience and worked to exhaustion and death. Dogs fight and kill each other for supremacy. The weak die, but Buck survives as his ancient instincts kick in and he hears the call of the wild.

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