Shelly's Book Blog

William Armstrong's Sounder, which won the Newbery medal in 1970, was one of those books I'd known about for a long time but for whatever reason had never read. I think it was because I knew it was really sad and so I avoided it. Well, I read it this morning and found that, although it was as sad as I had feared, it was also deeply moving and inspiring. This is the story of a boy whose sharecropper father is arrested for stealing food. Sounder is their dog, and he has a bark like no other dog. Armstrong describes it, in part, like this:

"But it was not an ordinary bark. It filled up the night and made music as though the branches of all the trees were being pulled across silver strings" (p. 5).

Sounder is also exceptionally loyal to his master, losing his great voice when his master is arrested and taken away.
It's interesting that Sounder is the only character in this book who is named. Armstrong refers to the main (human) character as "the boy" and his mother as "the woman" or "the boy's mother." Sounder, then, with his exceptional voice, courage, and loyalty, is the star of the story and it is his story that speaks with the most force, not only to the reader but to the story's other characters as well. This is a beautiful, powerful story, and I'm glad I finally read it.