Hatchet is the story of a young boy named Brian who is stranded in the middle of the Canadian woods after the plane he was in, crashes. Brian must learn to live in nature with no rations or food. He must survive with nothing but the hatchet his mother gave him before he left. Brian knows that he must learn how to live in this strange new environment quickly. He has to make many painful changes and ends up a completely new person with a new outlook on life.
Hatchet is written in an interesting way. The author, Gary Paulsen has written ?Hatchet? in two styles. First person and 3rd person. He will often start a paragraph with one word. This word sums up what Brian is thinking. For example:
Starving.
Then he will go on about what Brian is thinking as Brian in a more detailed manner.
The other way he writes is in 3rd person. He will describe what Brian is thinking, and/or doing. An example of this is when Brian is hunting deer for the first time. He explains Brian’s slow circular movements around the deer and the anxiety of his first deer hunt.
Hatchet is just one book in a trilogy of which I read all of. I found that hatchet was not the best book in the trilogy. I found the most enjoyable book to be the last one in the series, ?Hatchet: Winter.? One of the good things about hatchet winter is that you did not have to read the the second book in the trilogy, ?The Return?
All in all I found that “Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen was a very enjoyable book which I would recommend to all teenagers.