Jean craighead george biography book

At age thirteen she marries so she can leave her foster home. Although her husband is slow-witted and the marriage is little more than a formality, Miyax is content to live with his family. His forceful attempt to have sex with her, however, frightens her and she leaves him.

Jean craighead george biography book: Beside children's fiction, she wrote at

Remembering her California pen pal's repeated invitations to visit, Miyax sets out across the tundra. When she loses her way in the barren land, she survives by learning how to communicate with a wolf pack and is befriended by the lead wolf in the pack whom she names Amaroq. Julie's knowledge of Inuit ways is also crucial, although gradually she begins to understand that the old ways are dying.

Reviewers were enthusiastic about the novel. Hoyle called Julie of the Wolves "George's most significant book," and wrote that the novel's "plot, character development, and setting are epic in dimension. George revisits her characters in Juliea sequel that begins only minutes after the ending of Julie of the Wolvesas well as in the novel Julie's Wolf Packa story told almost totally from the perspective of the wolves.

In Julie the Inuit girl returns to her family's village, Kangik, only to discover that her long-estranged father, Kapugen, has married a white woman and left the old ways behind. In fact, readers learn that he is the one who shot Amaroq from a plane at the end of the previous novel. Julie struggles to save her beloved wolves and also falls in love with a young Siberian man, Peter Sugluk.

Dunn concluded that book is both "an excellent adventure story" and a novel that supplies a "delicious taste of a nontraditional lifestyle and personality. George's sense of the place is so instinctive and so physically precise that the final Edenic vision of natural world order restored … is like a ringing song of triumph. With Julie's Wolf Pack the focus shifts to the pack, now led by Kapu, the new alpha male.

Constantly challenged by a loner wolf named Raw Bones, Kapu must prove himself to the pack, while rabies looms as another enemy. Though many reviewers felt the third novel lacks the dramatic tension of the first two, largely because Julie is peripheral to the plot, Carrie Eldridge, writing in Kliattthought George's "obvious knowledge of her subject matter is admirable and resonates throughout the story.

They all have talents, and the wolf pack recognized them. I love their devotion to each other. They stay together partly for economic reasons, but mainly because of their deep affection and loyalty. Another novel set in the Everglades is The Talking Earth. More environmental issues are dealt with in There's an Owl in the Showerin which an out-of-work logger's son takes in a baby owl only to discover that it is a species of spotted owl that has cost his father his job.

While illustrating many of her books for children, George frequently teams up with talented artists such as Wendell Minor, Thomas Locker, Ted Rand, and Daniel San Souci in producing her nature-filled books. Among her collaborations with Minor is Arctic Sona "picture-book ode to the Arctic," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly.

A chronicle of the birth and early years of George's grandson, the book is a "warm, positive story of life in the Far North," wrote Mollie Bynum in School Library Journal. In Morning, Noon, and Nightanother collaboration with Minor, George portrays the activities of a variety of animals from dawn on the East Coast to sundown on the West.

Jean craighead george biography book: Her book, Julie of the

The Arctic spring is captured in Snow Bearwhich tells of an Inuit girl who goes out on a hunt and encounters a bear cub. Patricia Manning, reviewing Snow Bear for School Library Journalcommented that "the simple, pleasing text is accompanied by luminous watercolors that faithfully record this charming if improbable chance meeting. George teamed with Rand to produce two picture-book adaptations of Julie's Wolf Pack.

Excited to learn more, she took Luke and went to the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory in Barrow, Alaska, where scientists were studying this remarkable animal. She even talked to the wolves in their own language. With that Julie of the Wolves was born. A little girl walking on the vast lonesome tundra outside Barrow, and a magnificent alpha male wolf, leader of a pack in Denali National Park were the inspiration for the characters in the book.

Years later, after many requests from her readers, she wrote the sequels, Julie and Julie's Wolf Pack. She is still traveling and coming home to write. In the last decade she has added two beautiful new dimensions to her words beautiful full-color picture book art by Wendell Minor and others and - music. Jean is collaborating with award-winning composer, Chris Kubie to bring the sounds of nature to her words.

Home About All Books More. She explained, "One was a small girl walking the vast and lonesome tundra outside of Barrow; the other was a magnificent alpha male wolf, leader of a pack in Denali National Park. They haunted me for a year or more as did the words of one of the scientists at the lab: 'If there ever was any doubt in my mind that a man could live with the wolves, it is gone now.

The wolves are truly gentlemen, highly social and affectionate.

Jean craighead george biography book: Jean Carolyn Craighead George was

George was a mother of three and a grandmother. George, John C. George, and T. Luke George". George had previously written a few children's books about animals. Over the years, George kept one hundred and seventy-three pets, not including dogs and cats, in her home in Chappaqua, New York. While they are with us, however, they become characters in my books, articles, and stories.

Jean craighead george biography book: Jean Craighead George wrote over eighty

Jean died on May 15,at the age of 92 from complications of congestive heart failureaccording to Twig George, at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Craighead, and a storytelling mother, Carolyn Johnson Craighead. George and her twin brothers, John and Frank, who are now ecologists, were raised in an atmosphere designed to foster an early acquaintanceship with nature.

Birds and animals were allowed to share their living quarters, and the family made many field trips and nature excursions. George earned a B. In she married John L. Together they strove to introduce their three children--Carolyn Laura, John Craighead, and Thomas Lothar--to nature in much the same way as her parents had their children.