Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George.  Harper Collins, 1972 (paperback reissue 2003).  208 pages

Reading Level: Middle Grades, 10-12

Recommended for: Young adult, ages 12-15

Bottom Line: Julie of the Wolves presents an absorbing but over-romanticized view of life in the wild, paired with a low view of white civilization.

The title character, Miyax (her preferred name, though Julie is her English name) has been brought up by her hunter father Kapugen ever since her mother’s early death.  Kapugen has followed the old Inuit ways and taught Miyax to appreciate the same, but when she is forced to go to school in Barrow, one “old way” emerges that doesn’t work so well.  After Kapuchin goes missing and is presumed dead, his 13-year-old daughter discovers that he’s arranged for her to be married to the son of his best friend.  The boy, Daniel, is slightly older than Miyax and mentally challenged.  She assumes she has nothing to fear from him until he tries to force his marital prerogative (in a scene that often has parents crying “Foul!”), after which she flees into the tundra.  Her first plan is to walk to the nearest port town and beg passage to San Francisco, where she hopes her pen pal will take her in.  But she loses her way and exhausts her provisions, running a real risk of starving to death until a wolf pack dens nearby.  By watching the pack carefully, Miyax is able to learn their ways of communication and eventually ingratiates herself with the leader.  This noble creature she names Amiroq.  Over time she begins to see Amiroq as her adoptive father, and composes songs that attribute to him her life and health and reason for being—rather like God.  He’s more a totem than a god, but even that distinction doesn’t shield him from a violent death at the hands of an airborne hunter.

Miyax partly redeems her species by repairing Kapu, the alpha cub who was wounded in the same attack that killed his sire.  With winter coming on, Miyax learns that her human father is alive and has settled in a nearby village.  With great anticipation she makes her way there, only to find that Kapugen is remarried—to a white woman.  Worse, he’s become a bush pilot who flies hunters to their nefarious assignations with the wildlife.  Miyax escapes again, but at the frontier of Alaska’s forbidding winter landscape she turns back, with the sad knowledge that “the hour of the wolf and Eskimo is over.”

Jean Craighead George studied wolves extensively and her account of their pack life is fascinating.  The story has other virtues, like effective description and dialogue–but, as mentioned above, some of the material is unsuitable for 4^th and 5^th graders.  There’s no sympathy for slow-witted Daniel, whose attempt at rape is clumsy and pathetic and brought about not by lust but by taunting from the village boys.  The straggler wolf “Jelly” is a parallel character—rather than he attacking Miyax’s person, he tears apart her shelter and is later torn apart by the pack.  He’s killed because he is weak; Daniel is scorned for the same reason.  Yet in the comparison between animals and humans throughout the novel, the animals come out looking better.  Miyax’s disillusion makes for an unsatisfying ending, and suggests that she was better off by herself in the tundra.  Which is doubtful: even Eskimos prefer company, and the notion that a normal young girl can remain normal (much less happy) for months at a time with only wildlife for company is misleading.  We aren’t made that way.

What is humans’ relationship to the natural world?  That is the question at the bottom of the environmentalist debate.  It’s one Christians need to ask themselves, and encourage their children to think about, and sometimes fiction offers an ideal opportunity to do that.

Cautions: Sexuality (attempted rape)

Overall Rating: 3.5 (out of 5)

• Worldview/morality value: 2.5
• Artistic value: 4

Categories: Realistic Fiction, Middle Grades, Young Adult, Multiculturual, Retro reads, Award Winners, Discussion Starter, Life Issues

realistic fiction, animal stories, adventure, survival, middle grades, young adult (YA), multicultural, retro reads, wild animals, wolves, American Mythology, reformatted, abuse, death and grieving, Newbery, Julie of the Wolves, Jean Craighead George, Reading Level: Middle grades ages 10-12, Recommended for: Young Adults ages 12-15