One of my most vivid memories of middle school was carrying a paperback copy of The Red Pony by John Steinbeck. It was required reading in eighth grade, along with Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and several others. Our reading teacher also assigned our class to read The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, but parents objected. We did what all good 13-year-old boys would do in such a situation: we read it on our own.
Steinbeck’s novella was popular. The four connected stories were easy to read, and they were about a boy growing up on a ranch. The teacher encouraged us to read more of Steinbeck on our own, and a few of us did, tackling Tortilla Flat and The Grapes of Wrath (which was not as easy to read as The Red Pony).
Steinbeck (1902-1968) published a series of fictional works considered American classics, including Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden. He’s best remembered for The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award in 1940.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
No comments:
Post a Comment