Books like My Side of the Mountain
Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain and Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet make wilderness competence feel as gripping as any adventure. These three novels likewise prize resourcefulness, close observation, solitude, and a hard-won relationship with the natural world.
If you liked My Side of the Mountain, you’ll love these
Not lookalikes — kindred books. Each one shares something essential with My Side of the Mountain, and we tell you exactly what.
Brian Robeson enters the Canadian wilderness with far less preparation than Sam Gribley: after a plane crash, he has only his clothes and a hatchet. That difference gives this Newbery Honor classic its fierce suspense. Every fire, meal, and shelter must be earned through mistakes, attention, and persistence.
Readers who loved Sam’s practical ingenuity will relish Paulsen’s exact descriptions of Brian learning to see what the woods have been showing him all along. Yet Hatchet is more than a survival manual disguised as a novel; it captures how self-reliance changes a person’s mind. Lean, unsentimental, and almost impossible to put down, it is the essential next book.
Karana’s isolation on a Pacific island unfolds at a quieter, more haunting pace. She makes weapons, secures food, builds shelter, and measures time by the movements of animals and seasons. Like Sam, she becomes capable not by dominating nature but by observing it patiently and discovering where she belongs within it.
O’Dell’s restrained prose gives each practical act emotional weight, while Karana’s encounters with the island’s creatures gradually complicate the boundary between survival and companionship. Winner of the Newbery Medal and beloved for generations, this is one of the rare adventure novels whose solitude remains vivid long after its dangers fade.
Roz, a robot who awakens alone on an island, initially appears to be the least natural wilderness survivor imaginable. Her solution is wonderfully Sam-like: watch closely, experiment, adapt. She studies animal behavior, learns the island’s languages, and turns apparent incompatibility into belonging.
Brown’s brisk chapters and illustrations make the book immediately inviting, but its deeper achievement is the tenderness beneath its ingenuity. Shelter-building and seasonal preparation become part of a larger question: does living in a place—and caring for its inhabitants—make you part of it? Funny, inventive, and deeply moving, The Wild Robot offers the same pleasure of watching intelligence become woodland wisdom.