The classic story of a remarkable dog. Buck, lives a comfortable life as top dog at the home of the Judge. Son of a handsome St Bernard, Buck too is handsome, intelligent and totally trusted by the household. But everything changes when Buck is stolen from his life of luxury and forced into the harsh labour of a sledge dog in the heart of the icy Yukon Territory. How Buck survives his savage ordeal and responds to the pull of life as a dog living in the wild is a powerful story of the reality of nature which can only partially be trained out of the dog.
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This Oxford Children's Classic features an introduction by Anthony McGowan and other bonus material including insights for readers, facts, activities, and more . . .
Half St Bernard and half sheepdog, Buck is stolen away from his comfortable life as a pet and put to work as a sled dog in Alaska. Surrounded by cruelty, he adapts and learns the ways of the wilderness. Using his strength and instinct, Buck must fight for survival.
John Griffith Chaney — aka Jack London, whose life symbolized the power of will, was the most successful writer in America in the early 20th Century. His vigorous stories of men and animals against the environment, and survival against hardships were drawn mainly from his own experience. An illegitimate child, London passed his childhood in poverty in the Oakland slums. At the age of 17, he ventured to sea on a sealing ship. The turning point of his life was a thirty-day imprisonment that was so degrading it made him decide to turn to education and pursue a career in writing. His years in the Klondike searching for gold left their mark in his best short stories; among them, The Call of the Wild, and White Fang. His best novel, The Sea-Wolf, was based on his experiences at sea. His work embraced the concepts of unconfined individualism and Darwinism in its exploration of the laws of nature. He retired to his ranch near Sonoma, where he died at age 40 of various diseases and drug treatments.
