Jean Craighead George Turns 90
This article originally appeared in SLJ 's Extra Helping. Sign up now!
By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 6/29/2009 2:10:00 PM
Long before
SLJ caught up with the award-winning author and naturalist, who turns 90 on July 2, and is as alert, charming, and informative as on our first meeting more than 30 years ago.
You began writing as a White House correspondent for the Hearst International News Service. Were you the only woman?
It was during FDR’s administration and there were two of us before Jackie Kennedy—then Bouvier—joined us [as a reporter]. Then I married and became a professor’s wife and started doing magazine work.
It’s been 61 years since the publication of your first book Vulpes, the Red Fox (Dutton, 1948), 50 years since you received a Newbery Honor for My Side of the Mountain (Dutton, 1959) and 36 years since you won the Newbery Medal for Julie of the Wolves (Harper & Row, 1972)—and you still haven’t slowed down. What are you up to these days?
In February, I traveled to Chicago to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Lifetime Achievement Award. It was the first recognition I received that had a monetary award ($1,500) attached to it. I also have two new books, with the latest being The Cats of Roxville Station (Dutton, 2009) and Pocket Guide to the Outdoors: Based on My Side of the Mountain (Dutton, 2009), which I wrote with my daughter, Twig.
What was the inspiration for Roxville Station?
On my frequent trips to New York City by train, I would notice a group of feral cats around the train station in White Plains. I became interested in the creatures and began to do some research. Did you know that they use tail signals and only say, “meow” to living things?
What impact did receiving the Newbery Award in 1973 have on your career?
It raised me to another level. It was like getting the Pulitzer Prize. I was divorced, and it put me on my feet so that I could support my three kids and myself.
Are you surprised that Julie and Sam Gribley, the main characters from My Side of the Mountain, have become iconic figures in children’s literature?
It is amazing that they have taken on lives of their own; I often have to tell readers that there wasn’t really a Julie. The public librarian in Delhi, NY, near the locale of My Side of the Mountain, often has to break the news that Sam Gribley wasn’t real and didn’t use the town library.
What’s the secret to your longevity?
I have to point to science. Its genetics, my mother lived to 103, my father to 91, and my grandmother to 96.
How are you going to celebrate your birthday?
On my birthday, I will be surrounded by family, including my three children Twig, Craig, and Luke, and my six grandchildren, at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY, not to far from the Sam Gribley’s mountain.
View more photos of George.
