Squirrel And John Muir

An outstanding book for young naturalists Floy Hutchings, also known as Squirrel, is the daughter of the man who opened the first hotel in the Yosemite Valley in the 1860s. She has to fend for herself much of the time and is considered wild by her family and her father's guests. When the future naturalist John Muir is hired as a carpenter, Floy becomes his inquisitive shadow as he builds himself a cabin over a stream, talks to flowers, and listens to snow. Floy, determined never to grow up because she'd have to be a lady, and Muir, searching nature for a way to live free of society's expectations, are primed to find common ground. In this story set against a backdrop of watercolor paintings that vividly capture the beauty of Yosemite, Floy learns to see the world through John Muir's eyes.

John Muir, a young Scottish immigrant, had not yet become a famed conservationist when he first trekked into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, not long after the Civil War. He was so captivated by what he saw that he decided to devote his life to the glorification and preservation of this magnificent wilderness. "My First Summer in the Sierra," whose heart is the diary Muir kept while tending sheep in Yosemite country, enticed thousands of Americans to visit this magical place, and resounds with Muir's regard for the "divine, enduring, unwasteable wealth" of the natural world. A classic of environmental literature, "My First Summer in the Sierra" continues to inspire readers to seek out such places for themselves and make them their own.

Papers from a symposium on the endangered Mt. Graham red squirrel, called in response to the building of an observatory on the mountain by the University of Arizona, offers a comprehensive picture of the ecological conditions and the impacts of natural and man-mad changes on the squirrel and its mountain home.

"Peppered throughout famed naturalist John Muir's published work, articles, and letters and journals are ... descriptions of animals and stories about his encounters with them"--

This book features a collection of John Muir's essays, all revolving around animals.

John Muir's extraordinary vision of America comes to life in these fascinating selections from his personal journals. As a conservationist, John Muir traveled through most of the American wilderness alone and on foot, without a gun or a sleeping bag. In 1903, while on a three-day camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt, he convinced the president of the importance of a national conservation program, and he is widely recognized for saving the Grand Canyon and Arizona's Petrified Forest. Muir's writing, based on journals he kept throughout his life, gives our generation a picture of an America still wild and unsettled only one hundred years ago. In The Wildernesss World of John Muir Edwin Way Teale has selected the best of Muir's writing from all of his major works--including My First Summer in the Sierra and Travels in Alaska--to provide a singular collection that provides to be "magnificent, thrilling, exciting, breathtaking, and awe-inspiring" (Kirkus Reviews).