My Side of the Mountain (1959) by Jean Craighead George

🌳 Sam Gribley, a boy of about thirteen or fifteen, ran away from home, and determined to live on Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, the land of Gribley's ancestors. Every boy must have thought of running away and living in the wild; few perhaps made it true, but mostly for one or two days only before they went home. Sam Gribley, though, made it for months! And this book is telling you of his adventures, complete with detailed account of Sam's day to day activities; his way of securing shelter, water, and food, and how his wit guides him to survive even the snowiest days in winter.

🌳 Sam made his house by hollowing-up a huge and sturdy tree. How'd he done it? By learning a lot about living in the wild from books in the library. How to fish, how to burn the inside of a tree to hollow it, and how to make fire (he failed on his first night, but eventually became a pro after learning from a farmer he encountered). He eats fish he caught by his self-made rod, and learns to season it from plants or roots he forages from the forest. Sam also knows how to set traps for small animals like rabbits. But his ingenious idea came to him after watching a falcon flew on the sky. He stole a young Falcon from the nest (the mother certainly couldn't count!), and trained it to hunt food - very clever!

🌳 One of the setbacks of living alone in the wild is loneliness. Well, Sam is never very lonely. He has Frightful's - the falcon - company, but he also befriends a weasel he nicknamed the Baron. Well, it's not really Sam's pet like Frightful, but the three creatures live side by side in harmony. Sam's 'biggest' threat is rather from human being, than the animals or the weather. From campers (during summer) and hunters, to old ladies picking wild strawberries, who told reporters about the wild boy living in the forest. But the one he did make friend with is a man whom he nicknamed Bando, as he first thought him a bandit, but actually a schoolteacher who'd been lost. Funnily enough, this man - Bando - nicknamed Sam as Thoreau; what an appropriate name! I loved their friendship and everything they are doing together.

🌳 On the whole, it is delightful adventure story; informative, funny, refreshing, and insightful. The most hilarious part for me is perhaps when Sam decided to throw a Halloween party for the forest's inhabitants. He collects foods and placed them neatly around the tree. It was thrilled to see the animals' joyful gathering that night. However, at sunrise the morning after, Sam found that the party isn't over! The animals, no doubt ran out of food, ransacked Sam's inventory for the upcoming winter. And they made a whole mess in his tree house. It seems that all party is always the same, whether with human or animal guests - you inevitably found such mess the morning after. Human guests are slightly better because they know when the party is over, but the animals just didn't know when to stop!!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2