Jean Craighead George (1919–2012)

I really needed a win after starting (and giving up on) 3 separate books so when I picked up My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George I felt pretty confident considering it was a Newberry Honor winner. The introduction made me laugh because it was all about the author's experience running away from home and coming back very shortly afterward. (I was gone such a short amount of time when I was a kid that my mom didn't even know that I'd left.) This book gave me strong Hatchet vibes show more from the outset. Our main character, Sam Gribley, doesn't so much as run away as inform his family that he is going to leave and live off the ancestral family land in the Catskills. Like most parents, they think he's bluffing and that he'll be back shortly...but he doesn't come back. He actually makes it to the Catskills and proceeds to become self-sufficient. He learns how to strike flint for fire, smoke out a tree to make a warm home, train a falcon to hunt wild game, sew a deerskin outfit, and develop varied (and tasty) recipes. This is a story of survival, independence, and the beauty of nature. It turned out to be exactly what I needed to get past the duds I'd recently picked. If you (or a reader in your life) enjoy fast paced adventure stories that are heavily descriptive (with intermittent pencil illustrations) My Side of the Mountain is for you. 8/10 show less

Stories that have a female protagonist that do not center on domestic life or romance are always refreshing. And if they are written by a woman, all the better.

Besides being a good outdoor adventure that kept me intrigued all the way through, I am mulling over its larger story and meaning. Filled with native traditions, imperialism and capitalism, limitations of gender-defined roles, all of that packed into a book aimed at younger readers. That's a good thing.

The last few paragraphs show more surprised me at how sad they hit me. Realistic but sad. I understand George wrote a couple of sequels, but I'm not ready for them. I want to savor this one and its ending and to think how the life of Julie/Miyax might have continued, drifting in and out of my thoughts for a while. show less

Luke spends summers with his family in a small building on an island beach, where his father does research on seagull behavior. In particular, he's attempting to recreate experiments done by Dutch scientist Niko Tinbergen, to show that the birds have the same instinctive behavior in completely different areas of the world. I found this particularly delightful, as I've read Tinbergen's book myself, remember it very well and knew exactly what they were talking about. Luke's father is adamant show more about doing his studies scientifically and collecting enough data- which means repeating the same thing over and over. Luke himself gets frustrated with the tedium of the work, and sees different things in the birds' behavior that he wants to explore, but his dad gets angry and dismissive, sees this as a distraction and doesn't want to go into those other ideas. Luke also has a difficult relationship with his sister, jealous that when she gets a job on a lobster boat against their father's wishes, he lets her go ahead and keep working there, while Luke is forced to continue helping with the gull research. He chafes under his father's rule and wants to find another avenue for himself. Yet at the same time he finds himself becoming fond of certain individual seagulls and interested in their daily doings (some chapters are from the gulls' point of view, which is nice). When the summer winds down his father can't find anyone who will fund continuation of their study, and the reluctant decision is made to close the bird lab. Luke is surprised that he's actually disappointed their summers at the gull rookery might end.

The final chapters take a sudden turn when an accident at a local airport is caused by seagulls and other birds that frequent the airfield (and a man they know from the island was on board, making it very personal). Suddenly his father's knowledge of seagull behavior is in demand, as the airport authorities try to solve their bird problem. Luke gets to see first hand how the research material can be of use in the real world, although he still is at odds with his father, as they have different ideas on what the best solution is.

This book was pretty wonderful. I don't think I've ever read another juvenile fiction that had such a clear picture of field research work before- including the difference between applied and basic research, the struggles to obtain funding, the long boring hours of observation when nothing happens. It's also rather dated- sometimes in a quaint way. I can't imagine a teenager being allowed to just wander through an airport and go up into the traffic control tower! The sister gets roundly chastised for saying a mild swear word at the dinner table (her parents dramatically blame the rough compnay on the lobster boat as a bad influence) and the main character's attitude towards girls- especially his own sister- are rather demeaning even though he means it kindly. I didn't find this bothersome though, it just reminded me soundly of the timeframe.

from the Dogear Diary show less

A 1973 Newbery Medal winner, Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George is the story of a young Inuit girl named Miyax, Julie is her English name given to her by her aunt who sends her to an American school after the death of her father. Forced into an arranged marriage at age 13 to the mentally challenged son of her father’s best friend, she flees after he tries to rape her. She becomes lost on the Alaskan tundra and survives by befriending a wolf pack. Her father had been a skilled show more hunter and she learned from him many of the skills she needed to survive in such a harsh environment. Her plan is to make her way to a harbour town and escape south to San Francisco where she has a pen pal friend who has invited her to stay.

While the book is obviously written for a younger audience, I found it an engaging and educational read. As Miyax travels with the wolf pack, they become like a family to her, but there are some difficult decisions ahead for when she discovers that her father didn’t die but is now hunting wolves from an airplane. The simple prose and bittersweet story gives the reader a strong picture of how the original Inuit customs and culture are being forever altered by the modern world. show less