My Side of the Mountain

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 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 show more 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

There is something so satisfying about survival stories. For one, I feel like reading them prepares me to face similar challenges should they ever come my way. (Actually, I seriously doubt I'm any closer to being able to start a fire from flint and steel just because Sam Gribley explained how in this book--but still! I have some small idea! Right? Sigh. This is like how I thought I could make cheese from raw milk after reading [b:Little House in the Big Woods|8337|Little House in the Big Woods (Little House, #1)|Laura Ingalls Wilder|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449708s/8337.jpg|1200805] isn't it?)

Anyway. Survival stories have a natural rhythm and drive. There's just that basic question hanging out there: can the hero face down show more the elements and, you know, survive? Sam Gribley totally brings his troubles on himself, too, because he runs away from home. That might take away a little from the excitement of the struggle for survival, like in [b:A Girl Named Disaster|133775|A Girl Named Disaster (Orchard Classics)|Nancy Farmer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1200867028s/133775.jpg|1160483] where Nhamo has no choice but to run away, but it also is kind of cool the way Sam takes charge of his life and decides how he wants to live. Props, Sam.

So here's to an excellent survival story! The audiobook was very good. show less

This book was assigned reading when I was in elementary school, but I didn't really remember it. I decided to read it again, and I am glad I did. It is a well-written and engaging story, even for adults. I think most of us wonder what it would be like to live off the land entirely, and whether we could survive or not. The author wondered the same thing as a child and it later inspired her to write this story. She seemed very knowledgeable about the technicalities of gathering and preparing food, finding and building shelter, surviving winter, and interacting with wildlife. I look forward to the sequel, On the Far Side of the Mountain.

I reread this classic young adult novel about escaping to nature when a family member told me they could read it over and over. I have a sense I read this in 5th grade because I was instantly in the woods with Sam Gribley and his falcon, Frightful. Though idealistic at times (imagine: a preteen boy with city living only surviving a winter in the Catskills on nothing but his wits) idealistic is actually what the doctor ordered. The desire to escape, not be found, in conflict with loneliness and the human need for community was the book's most poignant moments. My family member was right - this one will get a prominent place on the shelf and re-read again and again with my child and to pass the time in a sylvan oasis in my mind.

This novel suffers a bad case of what I call "Tom Sawyer Syndrome", and by that I mean that it is a childrens' book with a main character adults seem to adore, but if a kid were ever to actually do the things the kid in this book does, the adults in his life would never stand for it. The boy in the story, Sam, runs away from home and lives alone in the wilderness for over a year (on the side of the titular mountain). Why is it that kids in these survival tales are glamourized, but adults living out in the wild are all portrayed as either (1) ass-raping hillbillies a'la Deliverance; (2) right-wing psychopaths a'la Ted Kaczynski; (3) pitiful, directionless lost-soul types like that guy Chris in Into the Wild; or (4) groussing crumudgeons show more like Henry David Theoreau in Thoughts from Walden Pond? The only positive wilderness-living adults I can think of in literature are the ones who are stranded in some remote location against their will, like Robinson Crusoe. That's too bad, because there actually are some people (adults) out there who really could survive in the wild, and that is pretty amazing. On the other hand, the idea of a twelve year old raised in an urban environment just going out and surviving and thriving the way Sam does in this story is ludicrous. Even if he did manage to catch enough fish and gather enough berries to feed himself I just think it's very likely he'd die of exposure, or fall prey so some animal eventually. All the boy-wonder Disney adventure crap in My Side of the Mountain is pure naïve self-delusion. If there are any twelve year old city kids out there who were taken by this story, and who are entertaining the idea of running away from home to become a solitary self-reliant mountain man, I would encourage them to consider the following list of things much more likely to happen than the adventures Sam had in this book:

1) His parents notice he's gone missing, and alert the police, who easily identify him at the bus station and bring him home.
2) Sam's parents anticipate he would go to the abandoned family farm upstate, and wait for him there.
3) Sam comes to his senses early on, realizes there is no realistic way he can live in the wild, and returns home in less than a week.
4) Sam abandons the whole idea of living in the wild and goes off to try to live with friends or family (who probably tell his parents what's up)
5) Sam trusts some stranger he meets on the bus, or hitchhiking up to the old family farm. His abused body is found in a ditch a few days later, or -best possible case scenerio- a private eye his family hired locates him a few years later in Tijuana dancing on tables for crack and candy bars.
6) Sam gets lost in the woods and starves to death.
7) Sam gets lost in the woods and freezes to death.
8) Sam gets eaten by a bear.
9) Sam falls, breaks a bone, and dies in the woods of starvation or dehydration.
10) Sam gets eaten by a bear. I listed this twice because seriously, that's what would happen.

So accepting the irrefutible fact that Sam would be eaten by a bear, I have to wonder why a story like this gets to be such a classic. I think it plays into both children and adults' fantasies about kids growing up and becoming independent. Many parents must look at their obese kids sitting for hours each day on the sofa, completely incapable of any original thought, but fully versed in the latest comings and goings of the Kardashian sisters, and they must think to themselves: "Gee, I wish my kids would run away from home and develop useful survival skills in the wilderness (and get eaten by a bear)." And it's true; it would be better and healthier for everybody if that would happen more often. On the other hand, kids sit around, as they have since the dawn of time, wishing they had more independence, embarrassed of the hypocritical life they must lead, which forces them to continually say things to their parents like "It's my life, and I can do what I want! ...but can I borrow the keys to the car tonight?" A book like this must seem wonderful to them... Sam goes off into the wild, with nobody to answer to, and carves out an existance for himself. Of course it would be more fun if he also had his cellphone and laptop with internet access, so he could check on Wikipedia whether those funny looking mushrooms are poisonous or not, and access to Facebook, so he could "update" his friends every 10 minutes, with helpful missives like "Still raining out here. I'm getting hungry again... think I'll check and see whether any new berries grew on that bush I saw earlier." Of course, Facebook or not, the kid would still eventually end up getting eaten by a bear. show less

I first read this book in 1965. Up until that point, I was a fairly desultory reader. I read well but was pretty much interested only in comics and did the bare minimum required for school. I thought the school books were stupid—which is eight-year-old-boy speak for "totally boring." Then my teacher, Miss Stewart, gave a couple of us a challenge: read what the curriculum specifies and participate in the class discussion...or...read whatever 20 books you want (with her approval) over the school year and have a one-on-one conversation with her on each one.

My Side of the Mountain was the first book I picked and I couldn't have made a better choice to become hooked on reading. I've probably read the book 10 times since then and while, to show more adult eyes, the book is a bit fanciful, there's no doubt that it's perfectly written to capture the imagination of a child. There is adventure, discovery and, most important, a lesson in independence. All this packaged safely: the book will not impel your child to go out and wander the streets of New York; the reader somehow knows that this is fiction, not a recipe for life.

This book pushed me to complete my first 20 Book Challenge (*smile*) and go on to a life of reading. I don't think you can ask much more from a novel. show less

I'm re-reading this fantastic book from my youth. I grew up with the Catskill Mountains looming deep purple in my backyard. I wished to be Sam Gribley setting off for them alone to live off the land. What an entertaining, rich coming-of-age tale for all.

Written in 1959 but there are still lessons to be learned today of achieving independence, making your dream a reality, finding your own way, and solving problems. Most of all it shines a light on how we can still appreciate the grand beauty of nature all around us in a new era of technology. We can live in harmony with it.

Follow a year with Sam as he makes a home in the old woods of his grandfather and teaches himself to build a home, live off nature's resources, make friends in the show more wild...and most importantly learn to love his own company. I didn't want his adventure to end. I like to think of Sam still there living in his tree home as I come whistling up the glen to visit him for a dinner of fresh caught fish and acorn pancakes with homemade jam. show less