Sam Gribley is having a very difficult time living with his family in New York, so he runs away from home to the Catskill Mountains to live on his own. He tries to survive with only a pocketknife, a ball of rope, forty dollars, a flint and steel. Sam realizes what courage, danger and independence mean after spending a year away from civilization, a year that changed his life forever. Jean Graighead George is an American writer, in her “portfolio” there are about a hundred published books, winner of twenty awards, including Knickerbocker in Children's Literature. My Side of the Mountain is the first part of a trilogy, for which Jean received the Newbery Medal and Honor Books award from the American Library Association. In 1969, “My Side of the Mountain” was filmed.