Line up a few cans on a rail fence and shoot ’em off. Like to find me an apple hanging way out on a branch, see if I can bring it down. 22 rifle Dad had given me in March on my eleventh birthday and set out up the road to see what I can shoot. Any other day, you start out after dinner, you’ve got to come back when it’s dark. Once you get your belly full, you can walk all over West Virginia before you’re hungry again. The best thing about Sundays is we eat our big meal at noon. She’s like that.ĭad chews real slow before he answers. You shoot its head clean off? Dara Lynn asks. I push the meat from one side of my plate to the other, through the sweet potatoes and back again.ĭid it die right off? I ask, knowing I can’t eat at all unless it had. I looked that rabbit over good, Marty, and you won’t find any buckshot in that thigh, Dad says, buttering his bread. I just don’t want to bite down on buckshot, is all, and I’m checking each piece.
She’s looking at me when she says it, though. Just once in my life, she says, I’d like to see a bite of food go direct from the dish into somebody’s mouth without a detour of any kind. Dara Lynn’s dipping bread in her glass of cold tea, the way she likes, and Becky pushes her beans up over the edge of her plate in her rush to get ’em down. Reading for detail and making inferences in Shiloh.The day Shiloh come, we’re having us a big Sunday dinner. Guided Reading Opportunities in Good Literature.Related Areas of Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site that lets a man mistreat his dog?" Is it necessary to be untruthful in order to gain some greater truth or good? In other words, do the ends ever justify the means? The book provides ample opportunity for discussion of such questions as: would money have made a difference here? And then there are the larger questions brought into focus by the author: what is truth? Marty makes two statements that are questions for debate: "A lie don't seem a lie anymore when it's meant to save a dog" and "What kind of law is it. Martin Preston's family's strict code of honor is the sticking point.
The great respect of the mountain people for each other's privacy and personal rights is at the heart of the book. The book is easily and quickly read but there are no simplistic answers in it. The characters are well drawn and even Judd, Shiloh's cruel owner, has some reasons for his behavior. This brief, simply told novel is better than most animal stories. He hides Shiloh in the woods until his perfidity is discovered and Marty must face the wrath of his parents and of Shiloh's owner, Judd. He does return Shiloh once, but when Shiloh returns, half-starved and obviously mistreated, Marty cannot betray the dog's faith in him as savior. When Marty, age eleven, befriends an abused dog, Shiloh, and his father demands that he return Shiloh to his owner, Marty must choose between deceit and truth. This book was reviewed by Carol Otis Hurst in Teaching K-8 Magazine.
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