Childhood Survival Books

I remember books I read when I was growing up, and the 2 that currently come to mind are My Side of the Mountain & Hatchet. For me during Cub Scouts these were the books that made me think beyond what they showed/taught us during weekly meetings. Even though it is just a read and I have not tested the little things I read since then with inexperience (homemade salt from tree bark) at home, it was a lot of fun.

I looked them both up today and was most excited to see that there is a new How-To companion for MSotM titled Pocket Guide to the Outdoors: Based on My Side of the Mountain

It might be many years later, but I am looking forward to getting it and reliving the air of adventure I once read as a child.

My Side of the Mountain is my current bedtime read to my daughters. There's a sequel to it as well as one or two other books by the same author in the same vein.

Swiss Family Robinson is another good book for kids but Robinson Curosoe is kind of dry.

-Blast

They would be:

The Far Side of the Mountain
Frightful's Mountain
Frightful's Daughter

I read The Call of the Wild and Up Front, but I was an odd kid.

Then there's White Fang if your a dog person

Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton is one of my all-time favorites.

my copy of Two Little Savages is just a few feet away---i check the print date and i see it's just about 100 years old..all of Seton's books are a good read even if dated.also try Sam Campbell's outdoor books.not survival but general outdoor story's
with a "message".Moose Country--How's Inky-A Tippy Canoe And Canada Too are just a few.if you are near the town of Three Lakes Wisconsin there is a memorial hiking trail around his old stomping grounds at Vanishing Lake.i read my Daughter all the Box Car Kids story's and while not survival they are "getting along without grown-up's" sort of tales. Dillon Wallace who survived a canoe trip disaster in Labrador back in 1901 wrote several "boys adventure books" Ungava Bob is the one i have.C.A. Stephens also did a number of books in the same vein,Camping Out and Left on Labrador are a couple i have also.this time period around 1900 seems to have many boys outdoor adventure storys,i'll leave you with St George Rathborne and Canoe Mates In Canada and The Young Fur Takers--that should keep you busy for the winter--

Jack London's "To Build a Fire," and Alice Dalgliesh's "The Bears on Hemlock Mountain"

My side of the Mountain was a great and memorable book for me. Hatchet was a great book as well. But what about Lord of the flies? It seems like a lot of people don't remember that classic.

I'm currently reading "Hatchet" to my daughters at bedtime, but I skip all the stuff about Brian's parents divorcing. Before that I read them the "My side of the mountain" books which they really liked.

-Blast

Hatchet is great my 11 yr old had to read it in school and now she has read The River (a sequel) and Brian's Winter (alternate sequel) There's 2 other books about Brian but the names escape me right now.

I also have My side of the Mountain for her to read and will try to find the other companion books to this.

I love reading books so I have no problem buying her books to read especially when I enjoy reading them too

Check out Lost on a Mountain in Maine by Donn Fendler true story of an 11 year old lost on Mt. Katahdin

My seven year old loves the Swiss Family Robinson. Two of my favorites growing up - Robinson Curusoe and anything by Jack London - are still a little advanced for him.

My son also really likes the Dangerous Book for Boys. It tells lots of great shorter adventure stories and teaches all sorts of cool skills. Les' "Survive" and Bear's "Living Wild" are also favorites for the survival stories sprinkled throughout. (We call Bear "The Dumb Guy" at our house but "Living Wild" is written for Scouts so stays away from the questionable stuff.) Looks like Bear also has a fiction book for kids called "Mission Survival: Gold of the Gods" or something like that.

My ten year old nephew loved "Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Extreme Junior Edition". It was a fun and imformative read. It's got a bunch of snippets, some a little less likely than others.

Strange Companion is a book I read as a child. It is about a boy's survival after being the sole survivor of a winter plane crash. I vaguely recall the book and would love to find it to re-read from an adult perspective.

A Light in the Forest about a boy taken by the Delaware and his adventures. I learned how to walk silently from that.

A co-worker is lending me My Side of the Mountain.

There's one I've been looking for that I cannot recall the name of - it involves a young couple driving into a snow drift and getting stuck, then having to get to safety many days later. I read it probably 20 some years ago and I can't recall the name of it. Anyone know it perchance?

From very early years, I vaguely recall a Winnie-the-Pooh hardcover that had Christopher Robin with a raft and lantern, in a flood or rainstorm. I have no idea what the title was, but I have a few mental snapshots of the illustrations. And I still remember the thrill that story gave me, how it fired my interest and imagination.

2 Adventure books I loved as a kid-The Island of the blue dolphins & The Cay,Lotsa' Good survival info infused into the neurons,Way back when!

My favorites were a series of novels for boys by Montgomery Atwater. They were about forest rangers, ski patrolers, and whatnot. As a young lad, I devoured every one of the series that our local library had available. Two I remember were "Hank Winton: Smokechaser", and "Ski Patrol".

Atwater knew what he wrote about. After service with the 10th Mountain Division in WWII, he went to work for the US Forest Service. He established the first formal avalanche research program in the Western Hemisphere, at Alta Utah, in 1945.

I don't know how I survived childhood, honestly. Why is it that life doesn't come with a manual?

Found it:

http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Bound-Harry-Mazer/dp/1435277678

Nice memories about childhood and nice lessons were learned at that time. There are many thing that looks foolish at that time when elders told to do so. But after spending a span of life, many realities come to known us, they have told that thing for our beneficial future life.

Jerry Todd Pirate
Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure

Tunnel in the sky, Farnham's freehold by Robert Heinlein

Seconding Bacpacjac's nomination and adding "Alas Babylon" by Pat Frank (came out in 70's?). Wasn't really a childhood book, but it made me think.

When I was in Fifth Grade I read the Hardy Boys novels, and when I found The Hardy Boys Handbook: Seven Stories of Survival I gobbled it up. I think I read it ten times. It would be difficult to overstate the impact it had on me. I vowed then and there to not be caught without at least a swiss army knife from them on.

The Golden book of Camping and Camp Crafts is top of my list. National Audubon Society Field Guides to Insects and spiders, Reptiles, birds, trees. Those were my go to books to browse while eating lunch during summer vacation.
For fiction Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George was my favorite. She does it right. Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien. Also Journey Outside by Mary Q. Steele. They are good because they make a point of the main characters survival skills both practical and mental.

Those are what come to mind right know. I'll probably remember others

Hatchet by Gary Paulson
Z is for Zacharia by Robert O'Brien
Trouble River by Betsy Myers (not really a survival book so much as a don't underestimate what you can accomplish with courage and elbow grease)

Non-fiction:

http://www.amazon.com/Alaskan-Yukon-Trophies-Won-Lost/dp/1879356678
Excellent read. Traversing glaciers on horseback, Sawing planks to build a boat to float a whitewater river, walking 30 miles a day as winter sets in Alaska after losing their gear on the boat.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Against-Wilderness-Classics-Collection/dp/1894898540
"Eric Collier's riveting recollections about the 26 years that he, his wife Lillian and son Veasy spent homesteading in the isolated Chilcotin wilderness made for an international bestseller and one of the most famous books ever written about British Columbia.

http://www.amazon.com/Diary-Early-American-Boy-Americana/dp/0486436667
"This reprint of an actual early-nineteenth-century diary provides today's readers with a delightful rarity. Eric Sloane has taken a fifteen-year-old farm boy's brief, concise notebook and expanded the daily entries with explanatory narrative and his own remarkable drawings. As a result, he has preserved the simplicity and charm of a bygone era."

http://www.amazon.com/The-Arctic-year-Peter-Freuchen/dp/B0007IZCNK#customerReviews
Dry but information you won't find elsewhere
"This book was published in 1958. It contains 12 chapters, one for each month of the year, starting with January and ending with December. In each chapter the authors explain what "happens" in the Arctic during that month: what happens to the winds, waves, water, ice, the plants, the animals, and so on. Maps and line drawings accompany each chapter. I found the book very informative for what the Arctic year was like 50 years ago. With global warming, I'm not sure this book would be accurate today. Still, it's very worth reading or consulting."

Asa kid, I followed the historical exploits of Dan'l B and Davy C and all those guys. Later I found the annual publication[/u]Accidents in North American Mountaineering[u][/u], and [u]The Survival Book[u][/u] by Nesbitt, Pond, and Allen to be quite informative. The latter, written in 1959, still contains useful information, although parts are charmingly obsolete (back pressure, arm lift resuscitation, anyone?)

Alas Babylon was re-issued in recent years. It is among the best of the survivalist fiction. Especially convincing because it's not overtly political or racist. But I would think that you need to be a fairly serious kid to read it any younger than 16.