Hatchet

Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is flying on a single-engine bush plane to visit his father in the Canadian wilderness when the pilot suffers a massive heart attack and dies at the controls. Brian crash-lands the plane in a remote lake somewhere in the vast forests of northern Canada. He has no food, no shelter, no radio, and no idea where he is. The only tool he possesses is a hatchet—a going-away gift from his mother that he almost didn't bring.

Over the next fifty-four days alone in the wild, Brian transforms. He learns to make fire by striking the hatchet against stone. He discovers which berries are safe to eat (and which ones make you violently sick). He builds a shelter from fallen branches, fends off a moose attack, survives a tornado, and battles the constant, grinding loneliness that is worse than any physical danger. Gary Paulsen's writing is raw and physical—you can feel the mosquito bites, taste the bitter gut cherries, hear the silence of the forest at night. A Newbery Honor winner that has hooked millions of reluctant readers for nearly four decades, Hatchet is proof that sometimes the best stories need only one character, one tool, and an unforgiving landscape.

Available at Popular bookstores, Kinokuniya, and the Singapore National Library.