Jean Craighead George wrote the great 177 page book, My Side of the Mountain. Sam Gribley has a huge family that lives in a tiny apartment in New York City. He gets fed up with it and runs away to live in the Catskill Mountains. He starts out having nowhere to live and just sleeping in the bushes at night. Then he decides to carve out the center of a giant hemlock tree and use it as his home. He becomes very good at catching food to eat and ends up eating very well. He starts to realize that it is kind of lonely up in the mountains. Just then he finds an abandoned baby falcon and names her Frightful. She is great company and helps him catch food when she gets a little older. Then he hears a familiar voice- his dad's. He comes and stays through Christmas. When Sam asks how he found him he said that he left some things behind and a lady saw him while picking strawberries. He is now living in the dead of winter and his dad must go. Sam copes with all the challenges that are brought with winter and works to keep him and Frightful healthy until spring arrives. He soon meets a reporter searching for the "Wild Boy". He doesn't want to be well known, so he denies being him.. After more time of surviving the wilderness, he hears his dad's voice again. But this time he has the entire family and they have materials to build an actual house. Sam doesn't want this because it will spoil his life in the wilderness. His mom says that she still makes his decisions until he is 18 even if he lives in the mountains. This was a great book and I think anyone would enjoy reading it.
