Word: yeller
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Yeller (Walt Disney...
...Yeller himself, a flop-eared hound with soulful eyes, who behaves as if he were trying to persuade Disney to invent a new cartoon character called Supermutt. He stops a bear that is charging the kid brother, rescues the older brother from a pack of wild hogs, saves the mother from being chewed up by a maddened wolf. The action, in short, is exciting for everybody, but all too often the dialogue is only for the very young. Sample: Kid Brother (after the family cow is killed) : "How come you shot old Rose?" Big Brother: "She was sick." Kid Brother...
...have one thing in common: almost complete immunity from literary criticism. Who would be rash enough to examine the soft underbelly of Bob, Son of Battle or cock an ear to the corny notes in The Voice of Bugle Ann? The same armor of sentimentality will surely protect Old Yeller. Texas Author Fred Gipson, onetime newsman and veteran of the pulps, has written double insurance into his third novel. Not only is Old Yeller a mongrel of rare courage and devotion; his 14-year-old master, Travis, totes about as much man on his boyish frame as any adolescent...
...Yeller wasn't much to look at: big, ungainly and downright ugly, with his mangy yellow coat and sneak-thief ways. But in Texas of the 1860s, with father away on a cattle drive to Kansas and mother and small brother to look after, Travis figured that any cur around the farm was better than none. Old Yeller had just drifted in from nowhere, helped himself to a nice side of meat and decided that he had found a home. As it turned out, Old Yeller did great things for the isolated little family. He ran down rabbits...
Knowing craftsmen in the dog-story game have practically made a convention of the tragic ending, and Author Gipson is not the man to trifle with convention. So Old Yeller has to go. But with his sure knowledge of Texas frontier life, a brace of engaging heroes and a loose-jointed, simple style to match, Author Gipson can probably depend on a substantial crowd of dog lovers eager to follow Old Yeller all the way to his bier...