"The Yearling" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (author), Edward Shenton (illustrator)

Ten-year-old Jody Baxter has wanted a pet his whole life, but money is scarce in post-Civil War Florida. An extra mouth to feed is out of the question when his family's farm barely provides enough for him and his parents. But when his father shoots a doe and orphans her fawn, he allows Jody to bring the baby home to raise it. Jody names the fawn Flag, and the two become inseparable. A year of trials and challenges sees their bond grow, but Flag begins displaying the instincts of a yearling deer, and destroys the farm's corn crop -- twice! Jody is forced to make a choice no child should have to face. 

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1939), The Yearling endures as one of American literature's most beloved novels — a meditation on innocence, love, and the passage into adulthood that resonates as clearly today as it did more than eighty years ago.

This copy is a first edition. It is inscribed on the inside endpaper and dated 'Christmas 1945'. Also, check out "Cross Creek", Marjorie Kinnan Rawling's memoir of her life in the very country that inspired the setting for "The Yearling".