Plot: Sam Gribley, tired of sharing a house with his mother, father, and 10 siblings, decides to run away. He manages to fulfill two dreams of almost every child. He runs away and gets away with it. Instead of running through the streets of New York. After studying and developing survival skills, he runs to his family's ancestral farm in the Catskill Mountains. Through his studies and mistakes, Sam creates a comfortable home within the mountains. He also discovers friends in the mountains in the form of Frightful, a falcon, and Baron Weasel.
Genre: Fiction, Adventure
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Similar Titles: Island of the Blue Dolphins, Hatchet, Julie of the Wolves
Personal Thoughts: A good introductory to survival guides. The story, while easily impossible, is thoroughly believable through solid research in survival, plants, and animals of Eastern North America. I loved this story as a kid, but I have the same complaint now as I did then. The reader never wants the story to end. An ending is inevitable, but it seems as unexpected and unwelcome as a penguin in the desert.
The book won a Newbery Honor.
I am always interested when this books comes up - I thought it had faded away but it really hasn't. It might be that parents sharing with their kids sort of thing. At a dinner party a few years back we were talking about kids and reading when this title came up - we all sat around and reminisced about how after reading it we wanted to run away and live in the forest. Of course this was in Montana, if it had been New York maybe we would have talked about the Mixed Up Files, and the Met.
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