Hatchet (novel)
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Hatchet is a 1987 Newbery Honor award-winning wilderness survival novel written by Gary Paulsen.
Plot introduction
In Hatchet, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is stranded alone in the Canadian wilderness. The bush-pilot of a Cessna 406 in which he is travelling to visit his father in the Canadian oil fields suffers a heart attack, and Brian must crash-land the plane. The plane sinks in a remote lake, and Brian is left with only the clothes he is wearing and a hatchet his mother has given him; his only survival tool.Plot summary
Brian must figure out how to survive for several months. Finally, at the end of the summer, Brian discovers the plane's survival pack, which contains an emergency transmitter. Brian accidentally activates the transmitter, and is rescued by a pilot.The book is a tale of wilderness survival. Brian, a city boy, must learn how to cope with nature or die. He figures out how to make fire by banging the blade of the hatchet on flint. He forces himself to eat whatever food he can find, such as turtle eggs. He deals with a porcupine, bear, skunk, moose and a tornado. He eventually becomes quite a craftsman, crafting a bow and arrows to hunt birds and fishing with a spear.
During his isolation, Brian reflects on his parents' recent divorce, and the dark secret only he knows: his mother was having an affair.
Paulsen followed Hatchet with four additional novels about Brian. In the first, Brian's Winter, Paulsen answers (by popular demand, he says) the question of what would have happened if Brian had been forced to spend a winter in the Canadian wilderness. He tells an alternate version of the story of Hatchet in which Brian does not use the survival pack radio to call for help. In Paulsen's second sequel to Hatchet, The River, a government agent asks Brian to return to the location of his camp and show him how he managed to survive. The agent gets struck by lightning and falls unconscious, leaving Brian to construct a raft to transport him to a trading post. The third novel, titled Brian's Return, tells the story of Brian returning to the Canadian wilderness in a canoe, aptly named the Raft, a gift given to him at the end of the book, The River. Recently in 2003, Paulsen has written Brian's Hunt, which tells of Brian hunting a bear after the bear killed David (the trapper who saves him in Brian's Winter).
Awards and nominations
Newbery Honor award-winning novelFilm, TV and theatrical adaptations
Hatchet was made into a TV movie in 1990 entitled A Cry in the Wild.
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