Sounder by William H. Armstrong

I read this just because it was a Newbery winner and I am SHOCKED that so many of the reviews on Goodreads are of people who love this book and cried while reading it. I basically hated the whole thing. How many dog books win the Pulitzer anyways? I am clearly not a dog person and clearly not a dog book person... but I just really didn't connect with this book. It's a story of a family of sharecroppers in the South probably in the early 1900s, and the father steals some ham to feed his family and gets caught doing it. He is sent to jail and hard labor for years, and his family is left to fend for themselves. His loyal dog Sounder gets shot when he is being arrested, and ends up disfigured but doesn't die, and waits until his master comes home. 

I feel like that summary I just wrote didn't really encapsulate the feeling of the book. It felt really dark--really black and gray and hopeless, except for the boy being able to go to school after a while. I did not like how none of the characters in the book had names, not even the main boy. The one redeeming thing about this book for me was that it was pretty short and I was able to read it in an hour or two. I wouldn't have wanted to spend any more time on this book.