My Side of the Mountain
Jean Craighead George's 1959 Newbery Honor novel is the journal of Sam Gribley, a New York City boy who runs away from his cramped Manhattan apartment to homestead alone in the Catskill Mountains on a piece of his great-grandfather's old land. Armed with a penknife, a ball of cord, an axe, and forty dollars, Sam burns out the inside of a giant hemlock to make a one-room house, traps a peregrine falcon he names Frightful and trains her to hunt for him, learns to make acorn flour and deer-hide clothes, and survives his first winter with help from a wandering English teacher and a curious local librarian. George, a naturalist by training, packs the book with real fieldcraft, edible plant lore, and falconry detail, and Sam's quiet, capable voice has been pulling kids toward the woods for more than sixty years. The book launched a long Mountain trilogy.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about My Side of the Mountain
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Twelve-year-old Sam Gribley walks away from his family's crowded New York City apartment with a knife, an axe, and a tree he has read about. He builds a home inside the tree and, with a peregrine falcon, makes it through a winter.
My Side of the Mountain is middle grade, recommended for readers 8 to 12. The wilderness-survival premise of a boy living alone in the Catskills has been a kid favorite for over 60 years.
Jean Craighead George wrote three books: My Side of the Mountain, On the Far Side of the Mountain, and Frightful's Mountain. The third book is told from Frightful the falcon's perspective.
My Side of the Mountain was written by Jean Craighead George, published in 1959 by Puffin.
My Side of the Mountain is 177 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, My Side of the Mountain takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
My Side of the Mountain is a standalone novel by Jean Craighead George, not part of a series.
My Side of the Mountain is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.