Outdoor School: Hiking and Camping by David and Blevins

The Outdoor School series offers interactive guides to experiencing, understanding, and appreciating nature.

Outdoor School: Hiking and Camping by Jannifer Pharr Davis and Haley Blevins, illustrated by Aliki Karkoulia. Odd Dot, 2021, 430 pages plus index.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-15

Recommended for: ages 10-up

Is the wild calling you, or your kids? If not, what would it take to get them outside? The Outdoor School series kicks off with this all-around guide to appreciating nature by being there. From the flexible waterproof cover with reinforced corners, to the many pages for note-taking and sketching, to the color-coded topic tabs, it aims to go outside with you.

The five major topics are logically arranged: Planning and Preparation, Hiking, Setting up Camp, Flora and Fauna, and Survival (including basic first aid). Under each topic are a wide range of subheadings that cover everything a middle-grader would need to know if he or she were heading into the wild. And we do mean wild—throughout the book it’s assumed that these young adventurers may be encountering bears, filtering and purifying water, and building their own campfires. (Adult supervision is taken for granted, but not always mentioned.) The information is practical and imminently applicable. Almost every subheading ends with a challenge to Try It, Track It (with lists, notes, or sketches), and Take It to the Next Level (i.e., master a skill).

The range is very broad, as the main topics suggest, so the information is basic. Still, there’s plenty to get you started. In fact, kid who devours the book and retains most of the content should have the equivalent of an Eagle-Scout ranking.

For non-camping families and kids who’d love to go camping, this book might be, not the next best thing to being there, but the thing to get them there. Hiking and Camping is the anchor book in the Outdoor School series; others focus on animal watching, survival skills, and rock and shell hunting.

Overall Rating: 4.

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 4.5

Read more about our ratings here.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

Reviews: Don’t Try This at Home? Find more outside activities in The Dangerous Book for Boys, and other subjects adventurous boys and girls will enjoy reading about: Spy Stuff and Worst-Case Scenarios.

Review: Hatchet author Gary Paulsen recalls his own fraught boyhood in Gone to the Woods.

Resource: There’s still plenty of time for fun in the sun! See our “Summer Fun Book List” for ideas.

We are participants in the Amazon LLC affiliate program; purchases you make through affiliate links like the one below may earn us a commission. Read more here.