My Side of the Mountain and Sequels...

MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN

Hidden Message: Be free and live in the wild! (Only for a little while though, and only if you're a boy.)

Pleasure rating: 5/5 stars!

Critical rating: 4/5 stars, despite the fact that the only female character is a voiceless, submissive bird. 

Would I buy it for a child I know: Yes! This book is perfect for a reader who loves adventure and the outdoors.

Sam Gribley, the Greatest Kidlit Character Ever

             Ok, so moment of personal nostalgia kidlit here: My Side of the Mountain was my favorite book as a kid. I wanted to be Sam Gribley. I mean, he ran away to the woods and survived in a tree hole using resourcefulness and trickery. He was like the Merlin of modern America. It was amazing. 

              When I reread the book last year as an adult for a graduate class, I wrote the analysis below. It reads kind of like a review, so I thought I'd share it. I also wrote another paper examining the novel through a feminist lens, and found (alas!) that unfortunately, this beloved tale is a product of the patriarchy. Big time. The only female character save Sam's docile mother is a tamed falcon named Frightful who clings to Sam to survive and provides him with food, without talking. (Interestingly, male animals are given a voice.) Too bad when you think about the subliminal message it sent to young readers including myself, but typical for its 1959 release. In any case I still love the book! 
            What makes George even cooler is that she recently wrote and released Frightful's Mountain, a novel about the falcon's survival story after Sam's departure, told through the she-bird's voice. George then wrote two other novels featuring the falcon - Frightful's Daughter and Frightful's Daughter Meets the Baron Weasel. I can't help but wonder if all of this sequel work is a response to criticism of the male-dominated original. Even if it wasn't, I'm dying to read them. When I do, I will post about it! 

Review and Synopsis

Sam Gribley, the tough-yet-caring protagonist of Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain, epitomizes the type of outdoorsy, rugged boy who earns the respect of his peers. Sam is a cool loner, something I have aspired to be, but never quite pulled off.    Unlike the majority of children, Sam is brave enough to actually go through with running away from his home to escape his feeling of disconnect. School ends in June and off he goes, determined to live off the land in the Catskill Mountains that his grandfather once owned.

After demonstrating some pretty awesome survival skills, Sam finds that same feeling of disconnect waiting for him in the wilderness. The close proximity to nature brings him closer to the pulse of life, hence bringing him closer to the idea of death. This reality forces a frightful Sam to push himself to survive, and in the end, it nudges the young protagonist to surrender to society, as even the loners among us must. (Well, except JD Salinger, but anyway...)

Sam runs away to feel immortal and free, and for awhile, he does feel this way; but paradoxically, his oneness with the natural world forces the runaway to acknowledge that his own life is fleeting. Like anyone who tries to run away from their life, Sam realizes he needs other human beings to find him, comfort him, and distract him from the reality that death comes to all living creatures, however beautiful.

Just as winter turns into spring, Sam becomes overwhelmed with an intense, unnamable feeling and writes in his journal: “You really want to be found.” 

Happily, the boy’s family comes to him and decides to live there, on Sam’s grandfather’s land with Sam. Now this brave boy can enter adulthood under the cozy protection of a family. He can forget about death for a while. And maybe that, at its core, is what family...and great books...allow us to do. Morbid? Maybe, but I think Sam Gribley (and JD Salinger, for that matter) would have agreed. 

Works Cited

George, Jean Craighead. My Side of the Mountain. New York: Puffin Books. 1991. Print.

Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc. 1955. Print.