Lacie with her sheep.
For Maine’s Letters About Literature, a program offered by the Library of Congress nationally and in Maine by the MHC’s Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book, 2006 was a banner year. Since 2000, the MHC has offered Maine students grades 4 through 12 the opportunity to write a letter to an author (living or dead) about a book that has profoundly affected them. In 2006, for the first time, a Maine student won not just the state’s competition in Level II (grades 7 and 8) but the nation’s, over more than 48,000 participants nationwide. Lacie Craven of Bucks Harbor wrote about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ The Yearling. Its story of loss resonated with her own experience raising animals (cattle, hogs, chickens, and many sheep) on her family’s Wild Wind Farm. Lacie and her parents traveled to Washington, DC, on September 30, 2006, to receive the national award at the Library of Congress, and to read aloud her winning letter, printed here.
Dear Mrs. Rawlings,
I live near the ocean, under a mountain, on a farm. We raise a lot of different animals, but mostly sheep. We also hunt for our food. These things made me feel very close to the characters in this book. If you have sheep, you have orphaned lambs, if you have orphaned lambs, you have true friends. They get into a lot of trouble (A lot like Flag!) but it’s all worth it to have a little lamb that follows you and is dependent on you.
I remember Mattie, a lamb whose mother had refused to take her. I had heated up her bottle and fed her every two to three hours every day of her life. She would kick up her heels and run with me down the road, then push her little plush head into my hand. We would lay in the grass, and I talked to her about everything, and she listened as I felt her fragile little hoof and followed her tiny, warm curls. One day she got sick. I kept watch over her the whole day, praying hard and making her as comfortable as possible. I picked her up and held her tight, tracing a little swirl on the side of her face. I hoped to feel her lean her head against me. She didn’t. She was dead. I reluctantly put her down and looked at her for the last time, covered her with a towel, stepped back, and said goodbye through tears to my lifeless friend. Afterwards I ran to the barn in secret and cried into my sister’s lamb until it was time to feed him. After each death it feels like you lost a child. It is so devastating, I cry and feel like I did something wrong, like I could have prevented their death. I felt like I had trusted in God and he let me down, like He had forgotten about me. Why did He give me something only to take it away? Why didn’t He heal her when I asked?
The answer came in your book. When I read about Jody and his fawn at first I asked the same question. Why does this happen? Then I saw what Flag taught him. All my lambs had been working unintentionally to help make me who I am today, and who I will be. They taught me how to deal with challenges in my life, how to overcome, and when it seems like I’m all alone, I’m really not. If I could have changed the past and brought Mattie back to life, I wouldn’t. I look back now and I only smile. I continue to raise sheep, and always happiness prevails over death. In every way when it seems like there is no good left in the world, you see it displayed in indirect ways. For every sad thing, there’s a happy reason behind it and it makes us stronger people. We can find rest in this. Thank you for writing this book.
Lacie
