CURLY AND THE WILD BOAR

This posthumous barrel-scraper from the author of Old Yeller has motherless Curly, twelve, taking off in a fit of temper after a wild boar that has trampled his watermelon patch. Before it's over, Curly's two dogs are wounded by the boar and Curly is trapped under a horse with a wormy pig tied up by his side and the boar wrestling with a wildcat nearby. Curly is saved by his older brother and his fat, no-account, but loving father Catfish—but, as the boar has come to the little pig's rescue just as the dogs came to Curly's earlier, the boy no longer has it in for the old hog. Garden-variety action, hoked up with a frontier accent and some man-and-boy sentimentality.