Mark Warren's favorite novels about a child’s immersion into wilderness
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Mark Warren's favorite novels about a child’s immersion into wilderness
Picked by
Mark Warren
What did I love about each book?
List by
Mark Warren
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Why am I passionate about this?
The child’s immersion into nature is a most relevant theme for me as an environmental educator, but it is critical to America as a whole. Our future depends upon it. We continue to live in a culture that shoves nature into the background, something viewed as pleasant scenery but not truly interactive in our lives. The “store” has become the source of things to many young people. The current generation of American parents is not equipped to teach children about nature and its indelible place in our survival as a species; therefore, books must become surrogates in this mission.
I wrote...
A Copperhead Summer
By
Mark Warren
What is my book about?
While Tyler Raintree’s parents are divorcing, the mother hides her son from his abusive father at Camp Itawa in the…
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The books I picked & why
My Side of the Mountain
By
Jean Craighead George
#1 of My Side of the Mountain series
Why I love this book
One boy alone in the wilderness—without any outside contact—is a crash course in “survival skills,” but this education also comes with a shift in philosophy that harkens back to paleo times when humans lived directly with the land.<br>When I read this book, I was coming of age in my relationship with the forest and was determined to learn about my ties to atavism and my potential as a defector from modern civilization. Though this book’s realities are stretched by the imagination, the soul of that human/wilderness relationship shines through.
What is this book about?
My Side of the Mountain
By
Jean Craighead George
Why should I read it?
10<br>authors picked
My Side of the Mountain<br>as one of their favorite books, and they share<br>why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
8,
9,
10, and
11.
What is this book about?
"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."-The New York Times Book Review
Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods-all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever.<br>"An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after…
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Books like My Side of the Mountain
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Why do people like this book?
Topics
Rural
Self reliance
New York City
Raccoon
Genres
Adventure
Environmental fiction
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The Tongues of Angels
By
Reynolds Price,
Why I love this book
As a veteran of 40+ years as a camp counselor and teacher of primitive survival skills, I loved this book for taking me back into that magic of the summer camp setting.<br>Oddly, I never attended a camp in my youth, largely because my family was never drawn toward nature. Somehow, I was born with an ineffable love of the forest, and as an adult, I found my calling as a teacher in the wilderness, even running my own summer camp in the mountains of Georgia.<br>This book’s setting in the Smoky Mountains is close to home. The relationships in this story ring true, and the nostalgia for those summer days of watching young boys and girls absorb “the real world” is kindled by Mr. Price’s work.
What is this book about?
The Tongues of Angels
By
Reynolds Price,
What is this book about?
"I'm as peaceful a man as you're likely to meet in America now, but this is about a death I may have caused. Not slowly over time by abuse or meanness but on a certain day and by ignorance, by plain lack of notice. Though it happened thirty-four years ago, and though I can't say it's haunted my mind that many nights lately, I suspect I can draw it out for you now, clear as this noon. I may need to try."<br>Set in a summer camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains during the deceptively tranquil 1950s, The Tongues of…
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Topics
Summer camp
Wilderness
Georgia (USA)
Genres
Literary fiction
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MacKenzie's Last Run
by
Gayle Rosengren,
"MacKenzie's Last Run is a highly recommended, emotionally compelling survival tale. It should be on the reading lists of readers ages 11 and up who look for stories of not just suspense, but...