While going to school in southwestern Connecticut, my class read My Brother Sam is Dead. I have owned a copies of that book, The Bloody Country, and Where the Red Fern Grows for almost 30 years, holding them for the day I can give them to my son to read.

This year, my boy finally read the Collier and Collier books, and he loved them. He had the same reaction to them I did long ago, and we sat and talked about them just like you and your daughter. He’s reading Where the Red Fern Grows now, and when he’s a little older I’ll give him a copy of my other gut-wrenching read, Flowers for Algernon.