My Side of the Mountain

Sam Gribley is twelve and fed up with the crowded New York City apartment he shares with his large family. He leaves for the Catskill Mountains, where his great-grandfather's farm stands abandoned. His supplies are a penknife, a ball of cord and some flint and steel.

The story is told mostly in flashback while Sam sits out a winter blizzard. It covers his first year alone in the woods. He makes a home inside a hollow tree, works out how to find enough to eat, and trains a peregrine falcon he names Frightful.

Other people come across him in the woods, a handful over the course of the year. Through these meetings Sam learns that doing everything for himself has limits, and that he still needs the people he loves.

This is a survival story for young readers, with a first-person boy's-eye focus on practical detail: shelter, food, animals and weather. Its pace follows the seasons rather than a chase or a crisis.

The book first appeared in 1959, with illustrations by the author, and was a Newbery Honor book in 1960. Two sequels follow, On the Far Side of the Mountain and Frightful's Mountain.