Hatchet (9781442403321)

by Paulsen, Gary

  • After the tornado exposes the tail of the sunken plane, Brian dives into the water and retrieves the survival kit that the pilot carried. He finds food, matches, and other things that make his survival easier. There is also a rifle. How does the rifle change Brian? Why doesn’t he like the change?

  CULMINATING THOUGHTS

  • Among the virtues that Brian acquires during his fifty-four days alone in the Canadian wilderness are willpower, patience, hope, courage, and trust in his instincts. How might these qualities affect Brian for the rest of his life? What other lessons in life does Brian learn from his experience?

  • Suppose Brian prepares a survival kit for another trip to the wilderness. Based on his experiences in the wild, what ten items might he place in the kit?

  WRITING ACTIVITY

  • Write a paper that Brian writes at the beginning of school titled “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.”

  Prepared by Pat Scales, retired school librarian and independent consultant, Greenville, South Carolina.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Text copyright © 1987 by Gary Paulsen

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Also available in an Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books hardcover edition.

  Designed by Mike Rosamilia

  The text of this book was set in Janson Text

  First Aladdin Paperbacks edition October 1996

  Revised cover edition, 1999

  This Aladdin Paperbacks edition December 2006

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Paulsen, Gary.

  Hatchet.

  Summary: After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive initially with only the aid of a hatchet given by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents’ divorce.

  [1. Survival—Fiction. 2. Divorce—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.2843Hat.1987 [Fic] 87-6416

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-84092-0 (hc.)

  ISBN-10: 0-689-84092-6 (hc.)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-3647-3 (pbk.)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4424-0332-1 (ebk.)

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-3647-5 (pbk.)

  87-6416