W.Wilson Rawls (24 September, 1913 – 16 December, 1984) was an American author known for the children’s book Where the Red Fern Grows.
Fun Facts about W. Wilson Rawls:
- Woodrow Wilson Rawls was born in Scraper, Cherokee County, Oklahoma, to Minzy O. and Winnie Hatfield Rawls.
- The author grew up on the family farm, which was allotted from his mother’s Cherokee heritage.
- The farm and rural experience in the eastern Oklahoma hills made excellent material for Mr. Rawls fictional stories.
- Mrs. Rawls taught her son to read. He was especially influenced by the stories of Jack London which made him want to become a writer.
- During the Great Depression the Rawls family left Oklahoma to California. Their car broke down near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mr. Rawls found a job in a toothpaste factory there.
- After the Great Depression, Mr. Rawls hoboed around the United States, South America, Canada, and Alaska collecting stories and making his living as a carpenter and laborer.
- The manuscripts he wrote during that time were full with spelling and grammatical errors, with no punctuation. He kept them hidden in the trunk.
- Where the Red Fern Grows, telling of a boy who finds and trains two hunting dogs, was made into two movies, a 1974 and a 2003 version.
- The author’s second novel, The Summer of Monkeys, won the William Allen White Children’s Book Award and the Oklahoma Library Association’s Sequoyah Children’s Book Award in 1979.
- W. Wilson Rawls became a very popular speaker and spent a lot of his own time visiting schools to encourage students to read and writer.
Zohar — Man of la Book
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Fun Facts Friday: W.Wilson Rawls
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W.Wilson Rawls (24 September, 1913 – 16 December, 1984) was an American author known for the children’s book Where the Red Fern Grows.
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Man of la Book
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Man of la Book - A Bookish Blog
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