<P> The Saturday Evening Post rejected the manuscript in three weeks . Sophie then sent the manuscript to the Ladies' Home Journal . She believed that a woman editor at the Ladies' Home Journal would like the story . About four months later, Rawls received a letter from the Ladies' Home Journal saying that it was the wrong kind of story for their magazine, but they wanted to send it to the Saturday Evening Post . Upon the second submission to the Saturday Evening Post, it was accepted . It was first published in serialization in the Saturday Evening Post in 1961 under the title The Hounds of Youth . </P> <P> Doubleday then accepted the book for publication . Rawls said Doubleday then "broke my heart ." They changed the title to Where the Red Fern Grows, and attempted to market it to adult readers . For about six years, it languished on shelves and failed to sell . Doubleday was going to put it out of print, but one agent named Mr. Breinholt from Salt Lake City fought for it and asked for just a few more months to market it . He got Rawls a speaking engagement at the University of Utah to a conference of over 5,000 reading teachers and librarians . Copies of it were made available to them . When they took it back to their schools, the children loved it, and orders began pouring in . Jim Trelease states, "Each year since then, it has sold more copies than the previous year ." </P> <P> Although sales of the novel began slowly, by 1974 over 90,000 copies had been sold . In 2001, Publishers Weekly estimated that it had sold 6,754,308 copies . Today Where the Red Fern Grows is required reading in many American schools . One critic said it will please adults as well as children . </P> <P> I remember crying so much through this book, and even today I tear up thinking of Old Dan and Little Ann . I also loaned this to my (then) children's librarian, because the library copy was always out . I even marked the pages, "Get out tissue here ." </P>

Is there a sequel to where the red fern grows