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    Sounder
    Sounder
    Sounder
    Audiobook2 hours

    Sounder

    Written by William H. Armstrong

    Narrated by Avery Brooks

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Newbery Medal–winning classic novel about the courage and faith—and the love of a dog—that give a family strength in the face of inhumanity.

    The boy knows that times are tough for his family. Every night, his father goes out hunting with their great coon dog, Sounder, to try to put food on the table. But even with the little they bring back, there is still never enough for the family to eat.

    When the boy awakens one morning to a sweet-smelling ham on the table, it seems like a blessing. But soon, the sheriff and his deputies come to the house and take the boy’s father away in handcuffs. Suddenly the boy must grow up fast in a world that isn’t fair, keeping hope alive through the love he has for his father’s faithful dog, Sounder. 

    Readers who enjoy timeless dog stories such as Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows will find much to love in Sounder, even as they read through tears at times.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 3, 2006
    ISBN9780061146510
    Author

    William H. Armstrong

    William H. Armstrong grew up in Lexington, Virginia. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College and did graduate work at the University of Virginia. He taught ancient history and study techniques at the Kent School for fifty-two years. Author of more than a dozen books for adults and children, he won the John Newbery Medal for Sounder in 1970 and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Hampden-Sydney College in 1986.

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    Reviews for Sounder

    4/5

    499 ratings35 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This book makes hearts sings
    • 5/5
      Sounder (the movie):This was a great movie about a very troubling time in our nation's history. This movie was cast in the 1930's when practically everyone was struggling to make ends meet, but this was even more so for black people. Not only did they have to battle and struggle with economic issues, but also with the degradation associated with the racial ideas of the time. Cicily Tyson and Paul Winfield were stellar in their performances. The unfortunate part (which is usally true of most movies past the 1960's), it did contain 5-10 vulgar words (d--- and h---, predominately). It was still a very good movie, to be recommended.
    • 5/5
      great book
    • 5/5
      racist people blacks and whites are equal we all bleed the same blood so unfair them
    • 1/5
      Did not like it at all. I found the story very depressing and hopeless. Even the ending, with the protagonist going to school and learning, wasn't very uplifting since it was by accident/chance that that happened. Pretty much hated the book.
    • 3/5
      Sounder is a loyal family coon dog, half bulldog and half hound who I feel is symbolic of loyalty and love. It is during the great depression and the father in a black sharecropping family is arrested for stealing a ham to feed his starving family. Sounder is shot and maimed trying to protect him. William Armstrong tells this story through David Lee, the eldest son who spends years searching jails and chain gangs for his father. David longs to own a book and to learn to read which is made difficult as school is an eight mile walk away and he must take on his father’s responsibilities while he is absent. Along his journey he finds indifference and deliberate meanness along with great kindness and understanding. A great read that shows us the world through a family living in extreme poverty with all the hardships that we, in our own comfortable existences, have no real concept of until it is brought to life for us as in this story.
    • 5/5
      Sounder isn't so much a story about a dog as it is the coming of age story of an African American boy in the depression era South. There is a beauty in the simplicity of the author's writing which imparts a great deal of meaning in a minimum of words. William H. Armstrong was definitely an author who understood the meaning of the saying, “Less is more” and put it to good use. I never thought a book in which the characters have no names could be so powerful, yet even though I didn't know what they were called and very little of what they looked like, the author made me really care about them. Though spare and unembellished, his narrative managed to convey the hardships of life for a sharecropping family during that time. Loneliness seems to be a running theme throughout a large part of the book, and I could sense the boy's feelings of isolation very deeply. It is also a story about searching for meaning in life. As the boy travels around the countryside looking for his father, he discovers his heart's desire. It is also about the unbreakable bond between a man and his dog that often transcends our mortal understanding. The way this connection was depicted near the end of the book was both joyful and heartbreaking at the same time, bringing tears to my eyes. From a parental standpoint, I think this book has some wonderful messages to convey to kids. All of the main characters, the boy, his mother, his father, and Sounder, all showed a great deal of determination in the face of adversity. The family exhibits a strong religious faith that was rendered in a very gentle way that I enjoyed. There is also the idea that if we search long enough and work hard enough, we can accomplish what we set out to do. Although I didn't feel that there was anything particularly unsuitable for kids in the book, sensitive readers, especially animal lovers, should be aware that there are a couple of descriptive scenes involving cruelty to animals and details of injuries received by both a human character and an animal. The boy also thought about what it might be like to watch two men die, one in the way that he'd seen a bull strangled and the other in the way that he'd seen a scarecrow torn apart by the wind. It was only his thoughts though, and he never outwardly exhibited any violent tendencies. Not to mention, both men had treated him very poorly, so it was rather understandable. Lastly, there is one use of the “n” word as a racial slur, and two characters die, but of course, dying is simply a part of life.Sounder, like many other children's classics, may be more easily appreciated by adults, but in my opinion, there is much for children to glean from it's pages, lessons that kids in our modern world need to learn but often don't. Sounder is a beautiful story that has earned a spot on my keeper shelf. I can understand why it won the Newberry Medal. It is a wonderful tale that is truly powerful in its simplicity. Although it isn't really marketed a such, Sounder is the first in a trilogy of books followed by Sour Land and The MacLeod Place. It was also made into a motion picture that received several Academy Award nominations. I'm really looking forward to reading the other books in the series and seeing the movie as well.
    • 4/5
      I'm sure at some point I should have read this growing up, but I didn't. A very simple, touching, and poignant story about a child dealing with very adult issues with impressive grace. Audible has a version that is beautifully narrated by Avery Brooks that i strongly suggest putting the two hours into.
    • 3/5
      The blurb on my edition of this Newbery winner says it is "told in a way that includes us all." By this, I assume they are referring to the fact that none of the characters (except Sounder of course) have names. The main character is "the boy," a black sharecropper's son of an unspecified age, and his parents, "the man" and "the woman." Rather than including us all, I thought it kept the characters distant. This is a story that would I would have expected to have me sobbing at several points, but I never shed a tear. I never felt close to the characters.The story opens with the man being arrested for stealing food to feed his family. As he is carted off in chains, the sheriff shoots the family dog, Sounder. After they are gone, the boy spends some time searching for Sounder, and then in a few years, when he is older, he spends months each year searching for his father.It's a well written book, but it never touched me the way it should have.
    • 4/5
      It brought my boys to see through the eyes of a slave's child growing to be an adult. The boy's thirst to read and to know brought wisdom to all those around him. His responsibility, and his family's dependence upon him even while young gave teachable moments to show what young people can do.

      No one was given a name, other than boy, ma and pa, but we knew the characters. We hoped for the mom to sing (she did when she was happy), she only hummed when she was nervous or anxious.

      The heart beat of the book rings with the lives of these people brought to life on the pages of this book.
    • 4/5
      I could picture myself there and found it kind of sad. :(
    • 3/5
      This is one of the more depressing Newbery winners I've read. It follows the story of the boy who is the son of a black sharecropper in the US South. In the beginning of the story, the boy's father is taken to prison by the sheriff and his cronies. While they are dragging the father away, they also shoot the family's coon dog, Sounder, who then runs off wounded. The story doesn't get much happier from there. It is a well written story, but not my favorite.
    • 4/5
      I was expecting a heartwarming story about a black boy and his dog. What I got instead was a story of loneliness and longing. A boy longing for his dog and his father.A story set in a harsh racist world - a world of poverty and heart wrenching despair as pictured in the mother. The boy first loses his father, as he is sent to prison for stealing a ham. Then the dog runs away after being wounded after a shooting. The boy struggle to rise above his environment with determination and faith, with his love for old bible stories, his aspiration to learn how to read, so his world can be expanded. I wanted to hear more about this kid as he grows up. What would become of him. Excellent narration by Avery Brooks.
    • 1/5
      Summary:Sounder is about a poor black sharecropper that goes hunting. The dog gets shot by a depute and runs off. The dog end up coming back with one ear one eye and can only use 3 of his legs.Personal Reaction: Back in the day blacks were not treated fairly and neither were animals. Officers took advantage of everyone.Classroom Extensions: 1. Have students read silently.2. Put students into groups and discuss each chapter.
    • 4/5
      The quintessential sad dog book. My only problem with the book is that all white people are made to look bad.
    • 4/5
      This is an excellently written story about the time of share cropping and the related prejudice between races. The story itself isn't as much about the dog as one would assume, but is more about things that come about because of what happens to the dog. Sounder is a book about overcoming sadness, struggle, even moving beyond what you expect of yourself. It is simple but, when used as a teaching tool, can be turned into many things that are complex. Very well written and easy to read. A great way to get younger readers involved in historical stories.
    • 5/5
      The Morgans, a loving and strong family of Black sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, face a serious family crisis when the husband and father, Nathan Lee Morgan, is convicted of a petty crime and sent to a prison camp. After some weeks or months, the wife and mother, Rebecca Morgan, sends the oldest son, who is about 11 years old, to visit his father at the camp. The trip becomes something of an odyssey for the boy. During the journey he stays a little while with a dedicated Black schoolteacher
    • 5/5
      I rated this book four stars because it is a book that I feel my students can learn a lot of life lessons from. I feel that they will also learn about a very important time period in our history when people were not treated fairly because they were a different color. These two reason are just to name a few of why I would place them in my classroom. In the book it tells of a story of how a young boy(story does not give him a name) that struggles with so much. He has to overcome being poor, death, and the ulimate problem of learning how to read when it is illegal for him to. After reading this novel I was reminded of how grateful I should be to have the oppourunity to be able to do things that at one point of time I probably would not have gotten the chance to do.
    • 5/5
      Sounder is a coon dog which lives with a poor, African-American family of sharecroppers in the post-Civil War South. The family consists of a father, a mother, an older son, and several younger children. The father struggles to feed his family in hard times. After working hard in the fields all day, he and Sounder go out hunting night after night but come home empty-handed. Then one morning, a ham is cooking in the cabin’s kitchen. However, that evening, an angry sheriff and his deputies come to arrest the father for stealing food and take him away to jail. When Sounder tries to go along with his master, he is shot in the face and crawls away, whether to heal or to die no one knows. After the trial, the father is sent away to work in the chain gangs. Then the waiting begins for the boy, his mother, and the family—waiting for word from his father, waiting to hear Sounder’s familiar bark, always waiting. After a while, the boy, angry and humiliated, begins going out all over the countryside to look for his father wherever he hears that there is a chain gang at work, returning home frequently to take his father’s place in the fields. His search continues for a number of years. Along the way he encounters a lot of abuse from guards and others, but he also meets an elderly schoolteacher who helps him to learn how to read. But will he ever find his father? And what will happen to Sounder? This extremely well-written, powerful story, which won the Newbery Medal in 1970, clearly portrays the hopelessness of black sharecroppers during the late nineteenth century. Everything in the novel is understated, allowing the emotion to speak for itself. In addition to the history lessons on sharecropper life in the South, the book illustrates responsibility, faithfulness to family, and hard work. Even though she cannot read, the mother tells Bible stories to the children, and, encouraged by hearing about Joseph, David, and others, they patiently endure. William Howard Armstrong (1911-1999) is the author of some twenty other books, including Sour Land, a companion novel to Sounder. He based Sounder on stories told to him by an elderly African-American teacher who worked for his father.
    • 4/5
      Some how I missed this Newbery-Award-winner when I was young, but I’m glad I finally had the chance to read it. The novel tells the story of a young boy growing up during the Great Depression in the south. His family is poor, but they work hard to make ends meet. They have to deal with local prejudice and make do with the little they have. When the father is arrested and sent off to a work camp, his son searches for him. During his travels he meets a teacher who sparks a thirst for knowledge in him and opens up future opportunities for learning. There is a harsh ending, but it leaves room for hope, which is important.  
    • 5/5
      A classic tale of growing up in the South amidst poverty, prejudice, and family drama. A Newbery Award winning novel that most youngsters have to read at some point during their education. If you have a student reading it, read it with them.
    • 4/5
      A classic, gotta love it. :)
    • 3/5
      This one is kind of odd because it's the sort of book that really takes some analysis, which doesn't match up with its reading level. At the end everything is tied together- it's a story about a moment and memory that never leaves you. It's a story of growing up and accepting that the moment is past. None of the characters have names except for Sounder, making everyone an image- less distinct than the dog. Everything happens in patterns except a few specific incidents. It's interesting that it's hinted that the boy's father found the ham in the garbage just as the boy found the book there. A very deep book without much story- I'd actually put this more at a high school level than middle school or elementary school.
    • 3/5
      Sounder is a loyal family coon dog, half bulldog and half hound who I feel is symbolic of loyalty and love. It is during the great depression and the father in a black sharecropping family is arrested for stealing a ham to feed his starving family. Sounder is shot and maimed trying to protect him. William Armstrong tells this story through David Lee, the eldest son who spends years searching jails and chain gangs for his father. David longs to own a book and to learn to read which is made difficult as school is an eight mile walk away and he must take on his father’s responsibilities while he is absent. Along his journey he finds indifference and deliberate meanness along with great kindness and understanding. A great read that shows us the world through a family living in extreme poverty with all the hardships that we, in our own comfortable existences, have no real concept of until it is brought to life for us as in this story.
    • 4/5
      This book is told from a young African American boy's point of view, but his name is never given. The parents just call him boy. This boy's father is a sharecropper sometime after the Civil War. Times are hard and the boy is surprised to find his momma cooking ham one morning. Later on a sheriff comes and arrests his father for stealing meat. Sounder is the dog that always went hunting with his father and tried to stop the men. One of the men shot Sounder. It mangled him, but didn't kill him. The boy looks for Sounder for days. Sounder finally comes back, but he's not the same dog. The boy goes and looks for his father for days, weeks, and it turns into years. Then he comes upon a nice man who will board the boy and give him an education. The boy comes home often enough to help his momma, but continues to get an education. Once when he is home, they are sitting on the porch and Sounder begins whining after someone coming toward the house. It is the boy's father who has been mangled by a dynamite blast and let go because he can no longer work. One side of his body is limp. The boy's father is home for awhile and decides to take Sounder hunting one night. The next morning the boy follows Sounder to his father who laid down and seemed to have went to sleep. He had died. The boy began to understand many of the things he had read in books and continued to get an education.This is a good short story to read to elementary students. It will allow them to gain an understanding of black people during this time and the challenges they faced.
    • 5/5
      Sounder is the story of man's best friend and a little boy. Set in the Great Depression, the story begins when a poor black man steals food for his family. When caught, the man suffers greatly at the hands of law enforcement and Sounder, man's best friend, comes to the rescue. After beign shot the man's son has to deal with the arrest and abuse of his father as well as the prospect that his dog is gone. Sounder was shot during the attempted rescue.This story is an old one. I remember reading it as a young boy. I think all students should. It's a great story and gives a voice to the best ideas we want our children to admire and attain.Students could read this book and then discuss how the story might have been different in today's society. Students can gain an understanding of what about the time frame made the story turn out the way it did?
    • 4/5
      The book starts out with how the dog came to be with a black family. Also the character of the dog like how his baying yelp can be heard for distances when he trees a racoon or possum. The story is also about the relationship the dog has with a young, black boy. The is set back during the depression it seems because life is real hard. For instance, some times there isn't always food to eat. The story demonstrates life for a young black boy and what he goes through growing up in those times, along with his dog. The illustrations were in black and white drawings and I thought were very good. It made the book seem more real.I remember reading this book back in Junior High School and I really liked it. It made me think of the times of hearing my own father talk of his childhood during the depression times, too. He was born during that time and remembers days of going hungry and just barely making it some times as a child. He said it teaches you a lot about life.I definitely would use this book for history, social studies, government, and in English with a book report. I feel the morals and virtues that this book teaches is definitely needed in this day and age. Even the movie is real good and comes very close to the reading of this book, and I would also consider showing the movie as a project to the children as well.
    • 5/5
      A sobering look at life for a poverty stricken, African-American family in the 19th century. Even though the characters remain nameless, Armstrong does an incredible job of developing them.
    • 5/5
      Sounder, a Newberry Medal winner, by William H. Armstrong, is about an African American boy growing up in a sharecropper’s family. The boy, his parents and younger siblings have no names, only the dog, Sounder, is given a name in the story. Poor does not even begin to describe this family’s economic status, and as a result, the father is jailed for stealing ham and sausage from the local smokehouse. In the process of the arrest, the children are exposed to the abuse of their father by the sheriff and his men, as well as the shooting of their dog Sounder. The boy is devastated by the prospect of his dog being dead, but doesn’t give up hope that he may come home alive. While his mother struggles to make ends meet by shelling and drying walnuts to sell, two pounds each night, the boy searches for his dog, wishes he could learn to read and go to school like the other kids, and fights the terrible loneliness he feels. Months pass and Sounder returns in terrible condition. The boy also begins searching for his father, against his mother’s advice. While the boy searches, he teaches himself to read and comes upon a kind teacher who offers him a place to live while he studies at his school. The boy’s mother agrees and he begins his education. This story is set in the early 1800s in the south. However, the perseverance the boy displays is a timeless example of how someone can keep living and becoming a better person despite the circumstances they been born into. While the racial issues have changed for African Americans since the 19th century, one cannot help the circumstances in which they are born today- i.e. an abusive family; an addicted parent; a poverty stricken family; etc, and so any child reading this story would be able to sympathize and relate to the boy’s plight. Armstrong does not sugar-coat the mistreatment of African Americans by whites in the time this story takes place, helping readers visualize the realistic conditions this race endured, and still do endure in parts of the country today. The violence the boy sees and endures because of his black skin is a stinging reality of what he and others endured during this time in history. The author creates admiration for the character, as he not only endures this treatment, but turns the other cheek, and does not fight back. He instead rises above his circumstances keeping his faith and bettering himself as a person. His dream of reading becomes a reality because of this endurance.
    • 4/5
      I'm not sure what I think about this book, now that I've come to the end. I've tried to think what the author was saying - what the connections are between Sounder and the father and the boy. I'm not really sure. Certainly, there is the idea of injury - the way the world can break a man (or a dog). And Sounder seems to represent something amazing - he's the best hunter, he has the best call, he is loyal to one man alone. That amazing something seems to be wrapped up in the father too. The son keeps hunting for him, and sees in him someone who never kneels, who could kill a cruel guard with his bare hands, just like Sounder does with his prey. Yet both the dog and the man are broken by the world, and the boy finds a different way to meet the world - not by force, but with education. I wouldn't say I enjoyed this book - but like many great books, it made me think.