This is a very popular book in Maine for obvious reasons. It's about what happens when a 12-year-old boy gets separated from adult care far from civilization. What he lacked in wilderness survival skills, he made up with resilience, religious training, and miscellaneous Boy Scout tips... and a lot of luck. As I read, I felt like I was on that mountain, too, with an intrepid 12-year-old beside me to tell the tale just the way he experienced it.
Donn Fendler died only recently. Throughout his life he very generously visited schools to share his experience with the generations of children who have enjoyed his book... and, one hopes, learned not to wander off on a mountain in Maine!

Just watched the movie of this. Had no idea of the story. But enjoyed having two different people read. The older guy that read, let us know when the kid had times of hallucinations. Or how bad his injury actually was, something they didn’t know until after.

Book was short,but had very descriptive writing.The story was good and had showed ways to survive in a situation.Its similar to Hatchet where he has to find ways to survive.He tried to find camps with a telephone so that he can call his parents.He had to find spots so that he can sleep.He was walking and noticed part of his big toe was missing and probably lost it in the abandoned camp and stepped on glass.He got lost on a mountain and drifted away from security.He has to find shelter,food,clothing and anything else to survive until he can get rescued.he gets bit with mosquito and bugs and all sorts of bites.He found about 2-3 abandoned camps and very little scraps of food just to hold him off until he could be found

My 4th grade daughter brought this book home from school for her reading group. She asked me to read a few chapters to her. She had already started it. I told her to give me a few minutes so I could catch up to know what we were reading about. Then I read a couple of chapters to her and put her to bed. I then went back and read the rest of the book. It was an easy read. Written for children.

It is about a boy who got lost on a hike and was missing for over a week. It is written in his perspective with some side notes. It is amazing this boy survived. The experiences he had were interesting. I did like at the end how it went back to tell what was happening with the search and rescue. As a mom I kept wondering how I would feel if this were my child, as he was missing and after he was found and I heard his adventures. Also while reading I kept thinking, "stay where you are!"

As I was reading with my daughter we were able to discuss what was going on and what you should do if anything like this happened. Cute book.

If you read this in elementary school, please reread as an adult!! 10/10 5 stars across the board. This book was published in 1939 and I think it stands the test of time as a powerful survival story.

Full Review here: https://youtu.be/oy-knepvXR4

A true story. Recommended to readers who like high suspense on every page. The protagonist, only twelve years old, survives two weeks in a Maine wilderness.

Really good, lots of suspense, based on a true story which is neat!!

Having just climbed Katahdin, and on the very trail that the Fendlers hiked, I can attest that this would be a rugged, frightening place to be lost. Twelve year old Donn Fendler is the opposite of the 21st century child: resilient, resourceful, prayerful, physically fit, and able to keep his head when many would have lost their grip on reality. How do we reintroduce those qualities to our young ones today?

Donn Fendler is well and deservedly remembered for something that happened to him when he was just twelve. We will get to that but first consider the following.

After graduating from the New Hampton School in New Hampshire, Fendler enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and served as a Seabee in the Pacific theater during World War II. He studied forestry at the University of Maine for two years and briefly attended the University of Georgia before making a career in the Army.

Trained as a Green Beret, he served in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. In 1962, he was posted to West Germany. With the rank of lieutenant colonel, Fendler later assumed command of a battalion at Fort Campbell, Ky. He retired in 1978 and moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, not far from the Army base.

There is something in the chronology of his service record that needs a bit more explaining. That is for someone else to uncover. Suffice it to say, all that describes a pretty full life. However, Fendler became a national sensation before his military service in 1939 for surviving in the woods for nine days alone.

The young lad from Rye, New York was separated from family members on Maine's Mount Katahdin. Famous as the popular end point of the Appalachian Trail, Katahdin was still wild in many respects.

The search became front page news and hundreds pitched in to find the boy. Without food or proper clothing (some he lost while drying it out), Fendler followed a stream and telephone line out of the woods 35 miles from where he went missing. Dehydrated and covered with insect bites, and 16 pounds lighter, he looked like a liberated prisoner of war. Fendler credited his experience as a Boy Scout in helping him survive (many fellow Scouts were involved in the search).

For any hiker who has battled bugs, you will appreciate this, “Somebody ought to do something about those black flies,” Mr. Fendler said. “They’re terrible — around your forehead, under your hair, in your eyebrows and in the corners of your eyes and in the corners of your mouth, and they get up your nose like dust and make you sneeze, and you keep digging them out of your ears.”

His story has joined the canon of missing hiker tales. The separation from family is a familiar mistake, doomed to be repeated. Later, with the book and memories still fresh, he would give public talks on his experience. Nearly 7 decades of retelling honed the story. “I hope the message that I give sinks in,” he told The Bangor Daily News in 2008. “It’s really about faith and determination. That’s the whole message.”

i can’t believe stupid sixth grade me couldn’t bother to finish this book. it was a pamphlet.

The more I reflect on it, the more I dislike this "book". I keep hearing people call it fascinating, and I just have no idea what they were reading. This book begins with no preamble, launching right into the thick of the story. And while that story had potential to be interesting, it is told flatly, exactly as you might expect from an "as told to" tag. But there is zero feeling in this book. As many times as he writes "Christmas! That was scary! Christmas! A fellow could feel lonely." etc, etc, nothing about the story ever conveys those feelings. It is flatly a "this happened, then this happened, and then I did this." There is no emotion, which you might expect from the tale of a young boy lost in an unforgiving wilderness. No, even when things happened that should have seemed scary or worrisome. As it was, the entire story was just a bunch telling with no showing. Disappointing.

Some people like disaster stories, some like romance but for me what does it is a nice survival story.

So this one takes a bunch of people out hiking - takes a kid (this is a true story about the author by the way) who leaves the summit of a mountain and misses the trail down - how does the kid survive? What does he go through when he discovers he's lost?

Good story - bad book.
I just never got the feeling that he was in trouble, I got no insight into what he was really feeling. If you read enough book reviews you'll hear "show don't tell" quite a bit and this book is the perfect example of what not to do. If I hear "wow that was dangerous" or "Christmas that was scary" one more time I'm going to lose my mind.

This is a definite pass - there are better stories with better writers out there - not terrible but not worth your time.