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Journey Inward
The author of books for children describes her life, experiences as a single parent, and love for the natural world
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
244 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1982
2 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
About the author
Jean Craighead George
204 books1,528 followersJean Craighead George wrote over eighty popular books for young adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves and the Newbery Honor book My Side of the Mountain. Most of her books deal with topics related to the environment and the natural world. While she mostly wrote children's fiction, she also wrote at least two guides to cooking with wild foods, and an autobiography, Journey Inward.
The mother of three children, (Twig C. George, Craig, and T. Luke George) Jean George was a grandmother who joyfully read to her grandchildren since the time they were born. Over the years Jean George kept one hundred and seventy-three 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 behaviour 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."
The mother of three children, (Twig C. George, Craig, and T. Luke George) Jean George was a grandmother who joyfully read to her grandchildren since the time they were born. Over the years Jean George kept one hundred and seventy-three 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 behaviour 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."
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 14, 2024
This is an excellent memoir by Jean Craighead George, a naturalist and award-winning author, writing primarily for children and young adults about the natural world. Her writing skills are evident throughout. Because the author was such a multi-faceted woman and interested in so many things, I learned far more in this memoir than I have in many previous memoirs I’ve read.
The book fully engaged me throughout and as mentioned, I gained a great deal of knowledge. I also felt that the book had a real authenticity about it. Best of all - I met and spent some time with a woman who knew how to love life and live it to the fullest.
Craighead George’s sense of humour fills her story. She was especially good at laughing at herself and it seems at any adversity that came her way. I got a true sense of what joie de vivre is about from a woman who passed away just before her 93rd birthday. She was a woman of many talents and way ahead of her time as a strong feminist, naturalist, hiker, writer and divorced single mom juggling many activities. She was also very much a realist, readily adaptable and extremely intuitive especially with respect to all animals. She was a great lover of fun and the home she shared with her three children was home to all kind of pets, both wild and domestic. No wonder all her children’s friends wanted to hang out at their house - where their mom and all the fun were
What an open, welcoming and amazing woman! I wish had the chance to meet her in person. Next best was reading her inspiring and delightful memoir. This memoir will lift your spirits and will strengthen and recharge your daring and stick-to-itiveness. Well worth reading.
More author information for those interested:
In 2016, Jean Craighead George was inducted into The New York State Writers Hall of Fame along with 3 other deceased writers - Maya Angelou, Don Marquis and Grace Paley. 4 noted living writers were also inducted in 2016 - Roger Angell, Roz Chast, Samuel R. Delany and Stephen Sondheim.
The Author’s Website
http://www.jeancraigheadgeorge.com/bi...
The Author’s Childhood Home Craighead - Now an historical site
https://craigheadhouse.org/history/
The book fully engaged me throughout and as mentioned, I gained a great deal of knowledge. I also felt that the book had a real authenticity about it. Best of all - I met and spent some time with a woman who knew how to love life and live it to the fullest.
Craighead George’s sense of humour fills her story. She was especially good at laughing at herself and it seems at any adversity that came her way. I got a true sense of what joie de vivre is about from a woman who passed away just before her 93rd birthday. She was a woman of many talents and way ahead of her time as a strong feminist, naturalist, hiker, writer and divorced single mom juggling many activities. She was also very much a realist, readily adaptable and extremely intuitive especially with respect to all animals. She was a great lover of fun and the home she shared with her three children was home to all kind of pets, both wild and domestic. No wonder all her children’s friends wanted to hang out at their house - where their mom and all the fun were
What an open, welcoming and amazing woman! I wish had the chance to meet her in person. Next best was reading her inspiring and delightful memoir. This memoir will lift your spirits and will strengthen and recharge your daring and stick-to-itiveness. Well worth reading.
More author information for those interested:
In 2016, Jean Craighead George was inducted into The New York State Writers Hall of Fame along with 3 other deceased writers - Maya Angelou, Don Marquis and Grace Paley. 4 noted living writers were also inducted in 2016 - Roger Angell, Roz Chast, Samuel R. Delany and Stephen Sondheim.
The Author’s Website
http://www.jeancraigheadgeorge.com/bi...
The Author’s Childhood Home Craighead - Now an historical site
https://craigheadhouse.org/history/
January 17, 2016
Jean Craighead George was probably my favorite writer when I was growing up (it would be between her and Daniel Pinkwater), but I had not actively thought about her for quite a while. During a long drive over the Christmas holiday, my mind wandered back to those formative reading experiences and I instantly wondered if she had ever written anything for adults. Lo and behold, I discovered this memoir and it rocketed to the top of my reading list!
The Journey Inward is a striking, messy memoir about nature, relationships, failure, inspiration, serendipity, and identity. It is also a fascinating portrait of how a creative woman experienced the social norms and gendered expectations of the 40s and 50s. Jean Craighead George has been one of my role models since I was 8 or 9, and getting a guided tour of her life only intensified my respect and admiration for her.
The Journey Inward is a striking, messy memoir about nature, relationships, failure, inspiration, serendipity, and identity. It is also a fascinating portrait of how a creative woman experienced the social norms and gendered expectations of the 40s and 50s. Jean Craighead George has been one of my role models since I was 8 or 9, and getting a guided tour of her life only intensified my respect and admiration for her.
Currently reading
July 7, 2019Just found out this existed & ordered a copy; can't wait to start this one...
March 14, 2022
The Journey Inward is a memoir that details the life, work, and inspiration of beloved children's and your writer, Jean Craighead George. I suspect most of its readers are very familiar with Jean C George or her works prior to due to the genre of the work. Additionally, it is particularly interesting mostly as an avenue of insight into her life, and into the workings of many of a readers' first page-turners. In terms of a synopsis, there is not much to say, it is, by all accounts, an average memoir, covering her major life story and important events, all the while in between easily delivering her fascination with travel and exploration, among other emotional experiences which triggered her inspiration for writing. I was excited to read this book because I had never had a great passion for reading until reading My Side of the Mountain, which for some reason or another I found hugely fascinating and couldn't put down. I personally enjoyed the opportunity to see into one of my favorite childhood writers and to see the process behind the drive to create the works that would later inspire hundreds of people, including me. Overall, I felt that it was a very personally and well written work that was interesting to read as a representation of the genre, which I personally don't read very often.
December 17, 2011
I've loved so many Jean Craighead George books... the Julie of the Wolves series, especially Julie's Wolf Pack... the ecology mystery The Missing 'Gator of Gumbo Limbo...a family memoir, A Tarantula in My Purse... Time for a grown-up memoir, Journey Inward! This book kept me engrossed. It was as well written as all her other books and was a fascinating tangle of personal and professional lives. Through the book, Jean grows as a person, a feminist. With the education of children and lives of animals as two of the passions of my life, this book was rewarding on multiple levels. I think I'm on a Jean Craighead George kick!
August 8, 2012
I grew up in Chappaqua, NY, where Ms. George raised her kids and lived until her recent death. Unlike some of my classmates who were acquainted with her, I never even knew about her books until I read Julie of the Wolves to my kids a few years ago. I loved the book and as a writer myself I was interested to read about her life and work in her own words. I was not disappointed. I was fascinated by her journey as a woman of her time, divorced in the 1970s, as my own parents were. Ms. George is a wonderful writer and the tale of her own life is wonderful and I regret I missed seeing her speak when I was in school.
August 28, 2023
I recently learned that Newbery author Jean Craighead George spent childhood summers at her grandparents' country home near Boiling Springs, PA, a mere 35 minutes from where I now live. There's a short video produced by our local PBS station if you're interested: Great American Read: The Wild World of Jean Craighead George. This prompted me to look for a biography, and instead I found her autobiography. One interlibrary loan request later and I was all set!
JCG's Pennsylvania connection runs deep: "The house stood on land that my ancestors had turned with the plow in 1742, when William Penn's son deeded a land grant to John Craighead. John was the youngest son of the Reverend Thomas Craighead, a Scottish physician turned Presbyterian minister, who had emigrated to New England in 1715" (32). It was interesting to read about those summers when she and her twin brothers, John and Frank, ran the woods and learned about nature. Her brothers ended up becoming noted experts on grizzlies in Yellowstone... but that is another story.
Naturalists seem to run in the family, and JCG ended up marrying a classmate of her brothers. It was illuminating to read about gender roles in the 1940s and 50s... it was also excruciating how often JCG held her tongue or deferred to her husband or gave him credit for her own work. Then there are all the moments in which JCG makes an observation or asks a question about an animal, then her husband tells her she's wrong and asserts a "fact," after which the animal responds in a way that proves she was right all along (seriously, I quit marking them all - they're frequent). I was happy when they divorced and she forged a more authentic life as a writer and single mother of three (and still angry that he took the royalties for books published under both of their names but which SHE had written).
Another thing I can't count is how often my eyebrows raised when the Craigheads and Georges adopted wild animals as pets and brought them into their home - birds, snakes, fish, raccoons, mice, bats, anything! Perhaps attitudes have changed about the appropriateness of this. However, there is no denying that JCG's ability to observe animal behavior closely was enhanced by welcoming them into the family. Some animals were kept for years. At one point, when JCG determines the time has come to release a different pet owl into the wild, she muses "I feel dreadful about letting him go....I've learned so much from him. I know the dark. I can hear mice running on leaves, moths flying to meet other moths. I know where the crickets hide and how the winds come up in the dark. I never knew the night before we raised Bubo" (70). Another time, I laughed aloud when the family moved into faculty housing at Vassar and decorators were dispatched to update their apartment. One asked "'Are there any special needs you have?...Needs that we could satisfy with a niche or personal corner, perhaps?'" JCG answers "'We have an owl... it would be nice to have a large sand box with a beautiful twisted stump in it for Bubo to sit on'" (67). You won't be surprised that they were not provided with an indoor sandbox for Bubo.
For me, the best part of the book is when she spends time in Alaska learning about wolves. Not only does this research trip lead to the publication of Julie of the Wolves (which finally won her the Newbery), but it revealed that some societies have figured out how men and women can partner in leadership rather than compete for dominance. She marvels at differently gendered behavior dynamics among wolves and also among the Inuit people.
If you are a fan of JCG's novels, you'll enjoy this book, too. I loved it! And now I'm off to find Going to the Sun to learn more about Rocky Mountain goats!
JCG's Pennsylvania connection runs deep: "The house stood on land that my ancestors had turned with the plow in 1742, when William Penn's son deeded a land grant to John Craighead. John was the youngest son of the Reverend Thomas Craighead, a Scottish physician turned Presbyterian minister, who had emigrated to New England in 1715" (32). It was interesting to read about those summers when she and her twin brothers, John and Frank, ran the woods and learned about nature. Her brothers ended up becoming noted experts on grizzlies in Yellowstone... but that is another story.
Naturalists seem to run in the family, and JCG ended up marrying a classmate of her brothers. It was illuminating to read about gender roles in the 1940s and 50s... it was also excruciating how often JCG held her tongue or deferred to her husband or gave him credit for her own work. Then there are all the moments in which JCG makes an observation or asks a question about an animal, then her husband tells her she's wrong and asserts a "fact," after which the animal responds in a way that proves she was right all along (seriously, I quit marking them all - they're frequent). I was happy when they divorced and she forged a more authentic life as a writer and single mother of three (and still angry that he took the royalties for books published under both of their names but which SHE had written).
Another thing I can't count is how often my eyebrows raised when the Craigheads and Georges adopted wild animals as pets and brought them into their home - birds, snakes, fish, raccoons, mice, bats, anything! Perhaps attitudes have changed about the appropriateness of this. However, there is no denying that JCG's ability to observe animal behavior closely was enhanced by welcoming them into the family. Some animals were kept for years. At one point, when JCG determines the time has come to release a different pet owl into the wild, she muses "I feel dreadful about letting him go....I've learned so much from him. I know the dark. I can hear mice running on leaves, moths flying to meet other moths. I know where the crickets hide and how the winds come up in the dark. I never knew the night before we raised Bubo" (70). Another time, I laughed aloud when the family moved into faculty housing at Vassar and decorators were dispatched to update their apartment. One asked "'Are there any special needs you have?...Needs that we could satisfy with a niche or personal corner, perhaps?'" JCG answers "'We have an owl... it would be nice to have a large sand box with a beautiful twisted stump in it for Bubo to sit on'" (67). You won't be surprised that they were not provided with an indoor sandbox for Bubo.
For me, the best part of the book is when she spends time in Alaska learning about wolves. Not only does this research trip lead to the publication of Julie of the Wolves (which finally won her the Newbery), but it revealed that some societies have figured out how men and women can partner in leadership rather than compete for dominance. She marvels at differently gendered behavior dynamics among wolves and also among the Inuit people.
If you are a fan of JCG's novels, you'll enjoy this book, too. I loved it! And now I'm off to find Going to the Sun to learn more about Rocky Mountain goats!
February 9, 2025
A memoire of a writing life during the last half of the twentieth century and slipping into the new one. Craighead-George tells her story with open honesty weaving her love of nature woven into each triumph and failure, each celebration and sorrow.
She won a Newberry honor for her first book, My Side of the Mountain, but did not win the prize itself until years later years, Julie and the Wolves. Along the way she wrote dozens of book and articles while raising children on her own after the failure of her first marriage. She worked life long to find her personal authority as a woman, determined to overcome her youthful "programing," suggesting that her personal growth as a formidable woman led to the failure of her marriage as he "outgrew" her husband.
I enjoyed seeing another person's take on the history I, myself, lived through. Her wolf stories opened the door to a wide interest in wolves, pro and con, and the inaccuracy of her stories about wolves and the Inuit people inspired wide controversies. Though scientists have discouraged reading her popular wolf books, they continue to be popular. I, myself, feel they are consistent with the norms of her time where children's authors felt freer to take liberties to dramatize their tales. I think the controversy becomes particularly strident because wolves themself inspire controversy. Viewed within this evolution of children's literature, the books can lead children (and adults) to read non-fiction which will correct mistaken or fanciful ideas along the way. Is that not the normal course of learning? Children, in the best of circumstances can be shown that fiction is a catalyst, to passion, not an encyclopedia.
She won a Newberry honor for her first book, My Side of the Mountain, but did not win the prize itself until years later years, Julie and the Wolves. Along the way she wrote dozens of book and articles while raising children on her own after the failure of her first marriage. She worked life long to find her personal authority as a woman, determined to overcome her youthful "programing," suggesting that her personal growth as a formidable woman led to the failure of her marriage as he "outgrew" her husband.
I enjoyed seeing another person's take on the history I, myself, lived through. Her wolf stories opened the door to a wide interest in wolves, pro and con, and the inaccuracy of her stories about wolves and the Inuit people inspired wide controversies. Though scientists have discouraged reading her popular wolf books, they continue to be popular. I, myself, feel they are consistent with the norms of her time where children's authors felt freer to take liberties to dramatize their tales. I think the controversy becomes particularly strident because wolves themself inspire controversy. Viewed within this evolution of children's literature, the books can lead children (and adults) to read non-fiction which will correct mistaken or fanciful ideas along the way. Is that not the normal course of learning? Children, in the best of circumstances can be shown that fiction is a catalyst, to passion, not an encyclopedia.
April 28, 2008
This was a fantastic book...introspective and insightful about the careful attention to birds and how they related to this woman's life
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews