Julie (Julie of the Wolves) - Hardcover

George, Jean Craighead

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060235284 ISBN 13: 9780060235284

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1994

Synopsis

Julie's decision to return home to her people is not an easy one. But after many months in the wilderness, living in harmony with the wolves that saved her life, she knows the time has come.

Julie is not prepared, however, for all the changes that she finds. Her father has forsaken many of the old Eskimo traditions. He has given up his sled dogs for a snowmobile, and now looks after the musk oxen that serve as the village's income. He will do anything to protect them -- even shoot any wolves that might threaten the herd. Julie knows that, like her father, she must find a way to reconcile the old ways with the new. But how can she do that without putting her beloved wolves in danger?

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in a family of naturalists, Jean George has centered her life around writing and nature. She attended Pennsylvania State University, graduating with degrees in English and science. In the 1940s she was a member of the White House press corps and a reporter for the Washington Post. Ms. George, who has written over 90 books - among them My Side of the Mountain (Dutton), a 1960 Newbery Honor Book, and its sequels On the Far Side of the Mountain and Frightful's Mountain (both Dutton) - also hikes, canoes, and makes sourdough pancakes. In 1991, Ms. George became the first winner of the School Library Media Section of the New York Library Association's Knickerbocker Award for Juvenile Literature, which was presented to her for the "consistent superior quality" of her literary works.

Her inspiration for the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves evolved from two specific events during a summer she spent studying wolves and tundra at the Arctic Research Laboratory of Barrow, Alaska: "One was a small girl walking the vast ad 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.'"

The mother of three children, Jean George is a grandmother who has joyfully red to her grandchildren since they were born. Over the years Jean George has kept 173 pets, not including dogs and cats, in her home in Chappaqua, New York. "Most of these wild animals depart in autumn, when the sun changes their behavior and they feel the urge to migrate or go off alone. While they are with us, however, they become characters in my books, articles, and stories."

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-8-George continues the story begun in Newbery-award winning Julie of the Wolves (HarperCollins, 1974) with the young woman's return to her father's home in Kangik, Alaska. As she becomes reaquainted with Kapugen, she tries to accept the fact that he killed her beloved wolf Amaroq. She must also come to terms with her father's abandonment of some traditional Eskimo ways in order to help the local population survive, his new wife (a white woman), and a new romantic interest of her own. Julie is no longer a loner; she, too, learns about being a part of a community, one that is struggling to exist in a difficult and changing environment. But she also vows to protect the surviving wolves and move them to a place where they will not threaten her father's herd of musk-oxen. Although there is purpose (nearing obsession) to Julie's actions, readers must pay attention to the frequent shifts in the location of the wolf pack and the all-important caribou, vital to both the survival of the wolves and the village. As Julie seeks to move the pack leader, Kapu, and the other wolves closer to a food source, readers may sense some resemblance to the scenes of gaining trust in the earlier title and some may question Julie's interference with the natural order of things (an intervention she cannot possibly maintain). Still, the sense of place and of a people is strong throughout. In the end, her father changes his philosophy from needing to kill the wolves to releasing his oxen into the wild, a conclusion that is a bit abrupt but thoroughly satisfying.
Susan Knorr, Milwaukee Public Library, WI
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0060235284
• ISBN 13: 9780060235284
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240
• Illustrator: Minor Wendell