My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

Reviewed by Bridget

Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

1960 Newbery Honor Book

Ratings Explanation

Violence:  Sam and Frightful, his falcon, kill animals to survive. Hunters shoot and kill a deer.  Sam quickly hides the deer under foliage.  He then skins the deer and sews clothing from the hide to keep him warm through the winter.  Sam and Frightful feast on venison.

Adult Themes:  Sam hitchhikes from New York City to the Catskill Mountains.  (This book was written forty years ago, when hitchhiking was a more acceptable means of transportation.)

Summary

This book is written in diary form.  Sam Gribley, a teenage boy, leaves his family’s crowded New York apartment and hitchhikes to his great-grandfather Gribley’s unused farm in the Catskill Mountains.

Sam spends the year living alone in the mountains.  He does make an occasional visit to the library in town to research “roughing it”.  He specifically researches which plants to eat.  Sam matures as he quickly learns survival skills.  He captures a newborn peregrine falcon and names her Frightful.  Sam trains her and she augments his diet with meat.  Through Sam’s journal, we learn of the animals he observes and befriends; the Baron Weasel and Jesse Coon James.  Sam finds shelter in a giant hollowed out hemlock tree and makes it his home by building a chimney and further hollowing out the tree for more space to sleep.  Sam also creates clothing to keep him warm through the winter.

I read this book aloud to my children, 11, 8,  and 4 years old.  We were all enraptured by Sam’s adventure, a modern day Thoreau!

©2009 The Literate Mother