Hatchet

Hatchet is clutch. This is the go-to book for my outgoing boys who don’t like reading. When they come to me in the seventh grade, utterly confused as to how to select a book, this is the novel I press in their hands.

Brian Robeson’s travails in the wilderness is something that readers can really connect to. It’s interesting that I, nor my students, have never had to survive in the wilderness, yet we relate so well to Brian. I was right beside him when he was sick from eating too many berries. I was as ill as he was from the bugs and the sun. I felt his fear and his elation.

Gary Paulson is brilliant for giving the readers more and more Brian books. They are a gateway drug to the adventure genre. Any other books that I park near The River and Brian’s Return get gobbled up as well.

This is one of my top ten essential books for a middle school library.