My Side of the Mountain

My Side of the Mountain, written by Jean Craighead George, is a great adventure book about a 12 year old boy, Sam, who runs away from his hectic life in New York to live on his great-grandpas abandoned farm in the Catskill Mountains. Sam is a very resourceful boy after learning so much from reading. He finds a home in the Catskills, a hollowed out tree. He uses Indian techniques to make his hollowed tree a little bit bigger. Sam gets very good at finding plants and trapping animals for food. One of Sam's most courageous acts was stealing a baby falcon from a nest. Sam read about falconry at the library and stole the baby falcon, whose mother he had been watching, to raise and teach how to hunt. This proves very successful and Sam and his falcon, Frightful, create a strong relationship. Sam learns to preserve meat, store food, and is very observant of animals and learns from them how to hunt for certain items. Sam uses many parts of the surrounding world to create a life in the forest, but will he be able to survive the brutal winter and the challenges that he faces as he lives alone?
My Side of the Mountain is a great book to read about adventure and independence. I think that readers from 5th grade on would enjoy the book. The text is easy to follow, and the story line may be something that some readers could relate to, like the urge to run away and be adventurous and independent in the wild. It is something that I could see myself wanting to do when I was young since I loved the outdoors and being able to hunt and fish would have been something I could do daily for the rest of my life. It sparks interest in learning new techniques about survival, and how being observant in the wild can be a beneficial.