Outdoor School is a survival story: the tale of how 12-year-old Melvin Shambry survived his own childhood. It’s Portland, Oregon, 1994. Racial tensions are high. Melvin’s mother, needing to escape yet another domestic-violence episode, brings Melvin and his little sister, Miaya, to the shelter of a huge pine tree in a city park for at least one night of silent sleep. As always in such stories, the lack of financial resources delivers a heavy burden, but what’s remarkable about the telling of this tale is how it focuses on emotional resources, and how Melvin’s experience during a single week of the real-life Outdoor School – a week in the wilderness, a week where Melvin can just be a child – transformed his life.