Jean Craighead George was an American writer of more than one hundred books for children and young adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves, the Newbery Honor Book My Side of the Mountain and its sequel On the Far Side of the Mountain. Common themes in George's works are the environment and the natural world. Beside children's fiction, she wrote at least two guides to cooking with wild foods and one autobiography published 30 years before her death, Journey Inward. For her lifetime contribution as a children's writer she was U.S. nominee for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1964. 

July 2nd, 1919 in Washington, D.C.  /  Died:   May 15th, 2012 - age 92, of Congestive Heart Failure