My Side Of The Mountain - Jean George

This book was a recent charity-shop discovery of mine, although it was first published in 1959 and is still available today as a Puffin Modern Classic. It's the tale of a young boy who leaves his New York home to try living off the land in the Catskills Mountains at the site where his great grandfather once owned a farm. He makes a few mistakes but is largely successful, making a house by burning out the hollowed insides of a Hemlock tree and raising a peregrine falcon chick to hunt with. His existence isn't made out to be easy or straightforward; he suffers from cold and loneliness at times, and occasionally feels real fear, but he gains companionship from the animals that share his neighbourhood and experiences pure triumph when he achieves something through his own resourcefulness.

My Side Of The Mountain is very vividly drawn, and I think a lot of this is down to the fact that Jean George did many of these things herself in her youth. Her father was an entomologist and the whole family spent months living in the wilderness, where they lived off a wild harvest and trained their own birds of prey.

The story appeals to the adventurous outdoorsy streak in me, and surely there are kids today who would love this book despite the fact that they could never have a similar adventure. It would have been impossible for my generation back in the 1980s, even though we had a lot more freedom then compared to now. Today's kids may not be allowed to go off on their own exploring the local fields like we did but I bet there are still plenty of adventurous children who wish they could! I find an interesting parallel in the fact that back in the 1980s my best friend was a massive fan of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons, despite the fact that it was first published in 1930; like my recent reading of My Side Of The Mountain, this was a fifty year old book being enjoyed even though there was no chance of her running wild or sailing her own boat. Both books may be dated in a lot of ways, but I think the spirit of adventure within them is timeless.