Dare to Explore - Survival Stories

My introduction to survival stories came many (many) years ago when a teacher at primary school used to read to us from chapter books every day. There are a couple I remember vividly. One of them was the Newbery Honor Book My side of the mountain by Jean Craighead George. I am not sure exactly what it was that attracted me to the book as a child. Perhaps the running away from the City and the independence of striking out on his own. Perhaps it was the interaction with nature because I was an outdoors farm girl. It could have been the pull of having an eagle for a pet and companion. It almost certainly wasn’t (at that time) that Sam spent a lot of time reading up and storing knowledge so that he could undertake this adventure at his local library. Maybe it was just a great children’s adventure story about a boy escaping and looking after himself – something a lot of children can probably relate to as a dream.

My side of the mountain hasn’t dated much since it was first published in 1959. The same can be said for a more modern survival story Hatchet by Gary Paulsen which was first published in 1987 and which quickly became a favourite, a classic (and also a Newbery Honor Book. Brian’s arrival is slightly more violent and unexpected than Sam’s, the result of a plane crash. And he spends less time in the wilderness but that doesn’t detract from the struggle and the adventure. As he struggles to find anything edible by the side of a lake in which the plane landed, you can almost taste the juice of the berries he finally finds and gorges himself on. You can almost smell the spray of the skunk he disturbs in his cave one night and feel the jabs of the porcupine quills as they stab your leg. This is children’s writing at it’s best for both boys and girls.

Hot off the press is an epic survival story The Winter Pony by Iain Lawrence. Based on the true story of the race to the South Pole, this book tells the adventure as seen through the eyes of James (or Jimmy) Pigg, one of the twenty ponies chosen to go on the expedition. The hardship of the life in Russia, gives way to the unsettling roll of the an ocean voyage and the piercing cold of the Antarctic for this pony. There are “storms at sea, killer whales and calving glaciers, crushing ice and gaping crevasses, frostbite and hunger and blinding blizzards”. It’s a fantastic and well researched story.

Another new book on Scott's Antarctic Expedition is the non-fiction No Return: Captain Scott’s Race to the Pole By Peter Gouldthorpe. This recent release is a superb addition to the resources that tell the story of the Antarctic Expeditions over 100 years ago. Told as a narrative with incredibly detailed illustrations to support the story, the information is naturally absorbed as you read. For those that know the story, this is a great retelling. For those that are new to the adventures of Scott and the men who perished with him on his adventure, this is a fantastic introduction and highly recommended.

The Little Refugee is Anh Do’s memoir The Happiest Refugee told in picture book form. Life in Vietnam was tough, made even more so by the war that came. So Anh Do’s family risk everything by buying an old wooden fishing boat and trying to escape to another country. And even when they finally arrived in Australia, things weren’t always easy. The sepia pencil illustrations of the struggle give way to colour in the new land as the family struggle to see if everything will turn out all right in the end.