Woody’s Words: Woodrow Wilson Rawls and Where the Red Fern Grows

This picture-book biography follows Woodrow “Woody” Wilson Rawls, whose reading of The Call of the Wild made him want to become a writer. Growing up on an Oklahoma farm in a poor Cherokee family, he left school to find work and kept writing even when he could not afford paper. During a difficult adulthood, he wrote privately for pleasure. Eventually, he told his wife Sophie about his wish to write; her encouragement and proofreading helped him revise an old story about a boy and his dogs for publication.