Maybe it’s just me, but I hate the fact that Elly and Carrie never took April to the hospital. It’s like Johnston only wanted to focus on the life of Farley and his great deed.
For some reason, no one is praising Edgar, who overcame his desire to scratch at the door only, using his bark and his attitude to convince the adults to come to April’s rescue. Why isn’t Edgar getting any love? Why not talk about April and her doctor’s visit? It’s that only Farley focus.
A lot of things could have happened off-screen, but the parents were headed back to the house acting like just warming her up would do it. There is nothing to suggest she went to a doctor aside from it being something a responsible parent would do. It would have been nice to have had at least one character say something like “The doctor said April is good.” Instead we get April staring at the stars from the inside, which gives me the opposite impression.
At this point in time of the original publication in 1995, the real-life Gramma Carrie, Rod’s mother, Ruth Johnston, had, in fact, passed away the prior year. I suspect it is the reason why she is making an appearance in this story.
1995 was a good year. Why not repeat the fights?