My Side of the Mountain

For my second post, I chose Newberry Medal winner Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain, as it is one of my favorite childhood stories. It is a classic story filled with adventure, growing up, and finding oneself being completely self-reliant. As a child, I often escaped to the woods way beyond my house and built lean-to's and would pretend to be like Sam, living off the wild. It was this book that assisted and influenced in my love for all wilderness and skills of living off the land.

The main character, Sam Gribley, finds himself unhappy with where he lives in the city of New York and decides to run away to the Catskill mountains, where he can live by himself. He leaves with only a very small amount of supplies and takes off towards his freedom. The story begins with Sam in his tree home explaining how he had found it and burned it out, making the beginnings of his home. He is alone with no one there to talk to, but begins to learn about the land, how to fish, hunt, and identifying plants that are edible. 
His only companion is Frightful, a falcon that he raised from a baby. Together they live in the mountains and learn about danger, courage, and independence from both the city and other humans.

The illustrations in this novel were done by Jean Craighead George and consist of black sketches depicting various assisting illustrations. Most of them have supporting cursive script which explain what each sketch is, most of which are sketches to show the reader survival skills. For example on page 16, there are two different shelters depicted, and the caption reads "a couple of good shelters - make sure your fire is on scraped earth- also be sure to put it out!" (Craighead George 2001). 

The genre of this book falls within the contemporary realistic fiction, as the characters, setting, and plot are all within the grasp of being realistic and could potentially happen in the real world. The realistic fiction genre focuses on wide arrays of human emotions including hunger, homelessness, growing up, etc. as well as experiences of today's world  (Galda, Cullinan, & Sipe, 2010). Granted, the book was written in 1959, but the plot and characters could still occur in today's world. 

Two response-centered projects that I believe would work well with this novel would be a present for a character and a recipe project. Considering that Sam left home with only a few items, the children could decide to give him a present to help him along his journey, and they could write a short essay to explain what and why they decided this particular present would be helpful to Sam. Since Sam finds himself eating wild food, like rabbits, dandelions, berries, etc. the children could make a cookbook related to only wild gathered food items. Making three recipes from such items and writing an essay to explain how they relate to the ingredients Sam uses would make a great way of experiencing ideas for food that perhaps the children would even want to make.

This book will always be one of my favorites, and Jean Craighead George did write two other books related to My Side of the Mountain. It is the My Side of the Mountain Trilogy (jeancraigheadgeorge.com) and it continues Sam's adventures. I would highly recommend all children to read these books and develop their adventurous side for the outdoors.

Reference

Galda, L., Cullinan, B. E., & Sipe, L. R. (2010). Literature and the Child. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cenage Learning.

Jean, C. G. (2001). My Side of the Mountain. New York: Puffin Books.

jeancraigheadgeorge.com. (2013, Jun 17). Works. Retrieved from Jean Craighead George.com: http://www.jeancraigheadgeorge.com/index.html