“Brian Robeson stared out the window of the small plane at the endless green northern wilderness below.”

From Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet.

As the child of divorced parents, thirteen-year-old Brian is traveling from his New York home with his mom to spend the summer with his dad in Canada.  Since his dad lives away from civilization, the only way to get there is by a small bush plane, which soon becomes a deadly experience for the young boy when the pilot dies from a heart attack, crashing the plane, and the young survivor, into the vast wilderness.  With no way to contact civilization, separated from the supplies on the plane, and unable to journey to safety, Brian is left alone to face the dangers of the wild with just the hatchet that his mother gave him as a gift.  Initially just able to chop firewood and catch small animals for food, Brian’s survival skills quickly develop as the summer moves on and his life in the wilderness, with it.  Along with the animal and weather dangers that frequently threaten Brian, he also struggles with loneliness and fear.  Crafting tools for survival and shelter, Brian soon realizes that the plane wreckage in the river may be his only way to escape the wilderness, but as risks everything to make it to the plane, Brian will face more danger than he has before.

Paulsen’s classic survival novel is written so well that it is pulse-pounding regardless of the distance between writer and reader.  This classic is captivating, but also intense and violent at times; while directed at young adult and younger readers, this book will be too much for some child readers.  Hatchet is a book unlike any other that will have readers captivated by the story until the very end.