Thank You, Jean

May has been a sad month for children's literature with the death of beloved Maurice Sendak, and now the prolific Jean Craighead George, who passed away on May 15 at the age of 92. Ms. George was a wonderful author and naturalist who has handed that love for nature down to countless children through the decades and into the future. Known most for her survival tale "My Side of the Mountain" , which won a Newbery Honor in 1960, and "Julie of the Wolves", which won the Newbery Award in 1973, she penned over one hundred titles during her lifetime.

Many of us have moments in life where we read a book that changes things for us. Sometimes you can sense your world shifting as you read, and sometimes you don't know its effect until much later. Jean Craighead George's "My Side of the Mountain" was like that for me as a girl. Yes, I loved being outdoors and around animals before I read the story of Sam Gribley's life of survival in the mountains, and maybe I would have become a homespun naturalist without it. But I know, when I look back, that this series of books fed my hunger for natural wonder and awoke in me a longing for wild places that haunts me to this day. Because of Ms. George, I was primed and ready for graduating to the wonderful works of some of my adult writing heroes: Annie Dillard, Aldo Leopold, and Wendell Berry.

So thank you, Jean, for your passion for the natural world and your desire to share that with young readers. In a world that is increasingly more structured, paved over, and overwhelmingly loud your stories of life in the wild places reminds us of what is so amazing about the things we cannot create with our own hands. It is more important than ever for us to know the uncontrollable wildness of nature, to remember that silence can feed the soul, and to understand that we have a responsibility to care for all life on earth. And I will continue to look for the perfect tree to build a house out of every time I go hiking.

To honor Ms. George's passing, I encourage you to turn off your media and go for a walk somewhere that you'll find plants and animals. Go ahead--soak up the quiet and be thankful.

Click on the pictures below to reserve copies of some more Jean Craighead George titles.

--Andrea W., H.Q.