I found Nature Girl through a library catalog search, looking for chapter books about the Appalachian Trail for my 6 year old son who has a sudden passion for books about hiking the AT. I am glad I decided to read it first before reading it to him, as it was a disappointment that I won't rush to read out loud to him.

We had recently finished Halfway to the Sky by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, another middle grade book that sounds, on its surface, strikingly similar to Nature Girl: a tween girl, disaffected from her parents, runs away and hikes the Appalachian Trail by herself. But that's where the similarities end. Where Dani from Halfway to the Sky is deeply traumatized by her brother's death, her father's abandonment, and her mother's emotional rigidity, Megan from Nature Girl is simply peeved at her well-meaning parents for restricting her television and cell phone use, and (even knowing plenty of moody tweens in real life) Megan is self-centered in an astonishing, cartoonishly obnoxious way that makes her character nearly intolerable to spend time with in each chapter. Whereas Brubaker Bradley's book has a finely drawn, vivid sense of place and very realistic details about surviving each day's hike on the AT, Nature Girl has only vague descriptions of entire days on the trail, and it is utterly unbelievable that a completely unprepared girl with no hiking experience, no equipment, and little water

Spoiler

could survive as long as she did, even considering the trail angels who helped her along the way

.

Given my son's enthusiasm for hiking books - which are surprisingly rare - I probably would have read it to him if the ending weren't so bad.

Had Megan's character shown any kind of genuine development, but she was nearly as astonishingly selfish at the end of the book as she was in the beginning. Yes, she did become surprisingly more determined to finish the hike, but I couldn't see that as admirable dedication as much as jaw-dropping, inexcusably selfish stupidity, especially knowing that helicopters, dogs, and volunteers were looking for her. Worse, when she finished the hike, everyone around her was accommodating and apologetic to her, as if they bore any responsibility for her irresponsible decision, and then she was rewarded with what she wanted so peevishly in the first place, her suffering friend's companionship. And her parents' half-hearted effort at assigning her a consequence was simply ridiculous - the cost of the helicopter and rescue squads was going to come out of her allowance? Realistically, it would be the cost of a college education, never attainable by an 11 year old. I wanted to throw my book at the wall.

Normally, I would not sit in judgment of an 11 year old's character flaws...11 year olds are allowed to be obnoxious occasionally, as developmentally appropriate. But I've never known a kid of any age to be so astonishingly horrible to a friend whose mother had cancer, and usually an adult author will allow a character to grow in maturity in a "coming of age" story, so there is some redeemable aspect to a journey like a solo hike on the AT. But lacking the realistic details of the hike plus lacking any true character development, I just couldn't have my 6 year old spend any time with this unenjoyable character, so I'm returning Nature Girl to the library.