Julie of the Wolves »

Jean Craighead George is the author of over eighty books for children and young adults. Her novel Julie of the Wolves won the Newbery Medal in 1973, and her novel My Side of the Mountain was a Newbery Honor Book in 1960. She has continued to write acclaimed picture books and novels that celebrate the natural world. She lives in Chappaqua, New York, and has had over 173 pets in the time she has lived there, among them geese and ducks.

To her small Eskimo village, she is known as Miyax; to her friend in San Francisco, she is Julie. When the village is no longer safe for her, Miyax runs away. But she soon finds herself lost in the Alaskan wilderness, without food, without even a compass to guide her.

Slowly she is accepted by a pack of Arctic wolves, Mid she grows to love them as though they were family. With their help, and drawing on her father's teachings, Miyax struggles day by clay to survive. But the time comes when she must leave the wilderness and choose between the old ways an(] the new. Which will she choose? For she is Miyax of the Eskimos—but Julie of the Wolves.

Faced with the prospect of a disagreeable arranged marriage or a journey acoss the barren Alaskan tundra, 13-year-old Miyax chooses the tundra. She finds herself caught between the traditional Eskimo ways and the modern ways of the whites. Miyax, or Julie as her pen pal Amy calls her, sets out alone to visit Amy in San Francisco, a world far away from Eskimo culture and the frozen land of Alaska.

During her long and arduous journey, Miyax comes to appreciate the value of her Eskimo heritage, learns about herself, and wins the friednship of a pack of wolves. After learning the language of the wolves and slowly earning their trust, Julie becomes a member of the pack.

Since its first publication, Julie of The Wolves,winner of thr 1973 Newbery Medal, has found its way into the hearts of millions of readers.

Children's Literature

This Newbery Award Book winner is the story of a young Eskimo who runs away from an arranged marriage and survives on the tundra through the nurturing of a wolf pack for many months. The book ends with Julie's return to her father and home. When the author was a nature writer for Reader's Digest, she went to Alaska to do a story on wolves, then a burgeoning new field of study. "I was fascinated and even communicated with one of the reluctant female wolves. What an experience!" It was also on that trip that she met Julia Sebevan, the woman on whom she modeled Julie, who told her much about the old ways of the Eskimos. It was George's first-hand experiences with the wolves and her admiration of the elder society that became the foundation for the book.