My Side of the Mountain/On the Far Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead GeorgeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Just finished reading aloud with Owen. I remember reading it in 5th or 6th grade by myself and loving it. This is a great story about self-reliance, and learning to live off the land. As a child I was fascinated and dreamed of going away to live in my own secret place, eating plants and making my own nature home. I definitely enjoyed reading this book again with Owen, and he enjoyed it as well.
At one point while reading we were looking on the store shelves for a car-washing chamois (shammy) called for in Owen's Wizard Craft book for making a coin pouch. (He's simultaneously been reading Harry Potter.) The chamois at the store was much larger than we needed and therefore more expensive, and so I went to explain to Owen what we might try instead. I said, "What the instructions want is some fabric that looks like leather, so do you know what we could do instead?"
"Kill a deer?!" He said.
So I about died. "Yes, kill a deer." How can I argue with that? If what he learned from this story is that when he needs some leather he can go kill a deer then I am a happy person. Good bye "Made in China", Hello self-reliance!
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