Brian is excited to have a chance to visit his dad who is living in a remote area of northern Canada. Before leaving, his mom gives him a hatchet as a gift. Things go terribly wrong when the plane Brian is traveling in crashes in the wilderness. The pilot does not survive, and Brian is left alone with only his hatchet. This exciting story of survival will appeal to middle schoolers.

I bought this book for required reading for my daughter. It was reasonably priced and recommended by her teacher. The book came quickly and she is ready to start reading.

Great book..read it in middle school and have always loved it! Finished it on one day!

This book was about a teenage boy who was in a plane crash. It was also about how the boy is surviving in the wild.  Overall I liked the book but there were a few things that did not make sense to me. For example: how did his parents feel about him being missing and why would he not tell his dad that his mom was cheating even though they are divorced. I would recommend this book for middle school because it has some words that you may not want your kid to hear or your kid may not understand. I would recommend this book to readers that like to have a mystery.-Chloe
“Hatchet” is a very good story. A lot of trial and error. But as the story progresses, it starts to get very interesting.  A thirteen-year-old boy, Brian flew to visit his father in Canada. But unfortunately, the pilot died in a heart attack, and Brian does not know how to fly a plane. He crashes in the Canadian woods to fend for himself for 54 days. But near the end, it seems that Brian feels more comfortable than in his own home. So I give this story a 4-star review and I would recommend it to ages 9 and up because there are some inappropriate words and ideas. - Jackson
Hatchet is a book about a 13 year old boy named Brian and how he got into a plane crash and how he survived the Canadian wilderness. Something that I think everybody wants to know is how his mom and dad felt about the divorce and him being missing. I would recommend this book for older chapter book readers and people who like reading about adventures. - Xander

Leí el libro *Hatchet* de Gary Paulsen y me pareció una historia muy interesante y emocionante. Trata sobre un chico llamado **Brian Robeson** que sobrevive solo en el bosque después de que el avión en el que viajaba se estrella. Lo único que tiene con él es una **hachuela**, y con eso debe aprender a buscar comida, hacer refugio y protegerse de los peligros de la naturaleza.

Lo que más me gustó del libro fue ver cómo Brian cambia a lo largo de la historia. Al principio está asustado y confundido, pero poco a poco se vuelve más fuerte, valiente y seguro de sí mismo. También me gustaron mucho las descripciones de la naturaleza y cómo el autor hace que uno sienta que está ahí con el personaje.

Me parece un libro muy bueno porque no solo es una historia de aventura, sino también de crecimiento personal. Lo recomendaría a cualquiera que le gusten las historias de supervivencia o de personas que aprenden a valerse por sí mismas.
I read the book *Hatchet* by Gary Paulsen and found it to be a very interesting and exciting story. It's about a boy named **Brian Robeson** who survives alone in the woods after the plane he was traveling on crashes. The only thing he has with him is a **hatchet**, and with that he must learn to forage for food, make shelter, and protect himself from the dangers of nature.

What I liked most about the book was seeing how Brian changes throughout the story. At first, he's scared and confused, but little by little, he becomes stronger, braver, and more confident. I also really liked the descriptions of nature and how the author makes you feel like you're right there with the character.

I think it's a very good book because it's not only a story of adventure, but also of personal growth. I would recommend it to anyone who likes stories of survival or about people learning to fend for themselves.

Great outdoors kind of book for the young and old alike.

Very good

A classic on survival. The book deals with the traumatic journey of a young boy who gets stranded in wilderness after a plane crash. How he survives, how he struggles and forages for food, how he has to use his wits and guts to battle the elements. And how through this harsh, brutal, churning, the boy ultimately mans up.

Raw, gritty and uplifting.

This book was fun and easy to read for a child, but at the same time recounted a plausible and serious adventure. I got this as a birthday gift for my little cousin.

I loved It

Very educational story about a 11  year old boy in a survival situation in north Canada.

Seemingly unknown outside the US, 'Hatchet' by Gary Paulsen never appeared on my radar until recently. Beloved by millions, this youth novel tells the story of 13-year old Brian Ropeson, who is left on his own in the Canadian wilderness and has to rise to the occasion in hope of being rescued.

Without giving too much away, the story starts with his mother driving him to a small airport in Hampton, New York, where he boards a Cessna 406 as its sole passenger on his way to visit his father, who works for a drilling company in the Canadian oil fields of the far north. His parents have recently divorced on his mother's behalf and Brian is still in the process of coping with this fact. Throughout the book, Paulsen regularly invokes this aspect of the character's background, going further into detail each time, implying infidelity of the mother as the reason. While his parents' separation is a plausible reason for him to be on such a delicate plane flying this exotic route, Paulsen never manages to weave a character-expanding purpose for it into the rest of the survival tale. Brian neither gains insight from it, nor do the unfolding events affect his perspective in being a divorce-child. Without this subplot, the main arc would literally remain unchanged–a chance unfortunately missed.
The book kicks into full gear when the pilot suffers a heart-attack above the lush forest wilder lands of the big white north. Unable to successfully establish communication and with fuel running low, Brian aims for an L-shaped lake on the horizon, revealed in the light of the afternoon sun. The plane relentlessly dives into the concrete-like water of the lake, tearing all of the windows out, throwing him about, and finally sinking into the green-blue depths. Brian escapes to the shore, mostly unharmed, but severely bruised and overall physically weakened. Almost two days of regeneration follow, in which he slowly familiarises himself with the lake, the forest, and their inhabitants.
This is when the title-giving hatchet takes centre stage in the story. Gifted to him by his mother before his departure, it becomes the life-saving foundation for all of his endeavours around the lake. A realisation the character also comes to closer to the books' ending, when he almost loses it on his quest to retrieve a survival kit from the re-emerged plane wrack. Without the hatchet, he couldn't have achieved anything; the hatchet is him. With this tool, he not only builds a shelter, crafts spears, bow and arrows for hunting, but also manages to make fire by catching sparks from hacking away at a rock.
Drama comes in the form of wildlife encounters and environmental hazards. Since they are crucial to the narrative, I am hesitant to spoil them, but let me state that Paulsen deserves credit for some well-placed twists on the survival formula. There are some unexpected adversaries, but also obvious ones, who turn out to be as curious of the main character, as he is of them. In these passages, the author muses on nature itself. And as the weeks pass by, Brian draws more and more conclusions from his experiences. He becomes driven by hunger, just like all the animals of the forest are, for nature is not allowed to be lazy. Food is life. And even though this hostile environment repeatedly lashes out against him, he becomes part of its ecosystem, and rises through failure with new-found maturity. But Brian can't help but to marvel at the poetic beauty of the scenery. This is wilderness romanticism at its best, but Paulsen avoids meandering on it and manages to make these points by way of narrative.

In the end, the book's shortness works to its advantage. A story this linear could've easily overstayed its welcome, but by keeping the chapters short and the word-count economic, the narrative breezily moves from checkpoint to checkpoint.
Make no mistake, this is a coming of age novel set against the backdrop of the Canadian wilderness, constantly contrasting civilisation with nature. But I found the main character's arc much easier to digest this way; and with the usual schmaltz of other youth novels avoided, Paulsen delivers a swiftly-paced, captivating read for all ages.