Hatchet

I read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. This book received the Newbery medal in 1988. I really enjoyed reading this book, but not just because of the storyline. I really like how Gary Paulsen writes. He used repetition and fragments of sentences to really convey what the character is thinking and feeling. This book is about a thirteen-year-old boy named Brian. At the beginning of the book, Brian is working through the emotions of his parent's fresh divorce. It's hard, as it would be for any kid, but Brian also knew a secret. That his mom was/had been seeing another man. Brian is going through the thoughts in his head while he's on a small plane on the way to stay with his dad for the summer. However, everything changes when the pilot has a heart attack mid flight. Brian lands the plane in a lake, and barely makes it out alive. A major chunk of the book is learning how Brian survives. Brian has a mental change after about a week after the crash. He changes from being hopeful of rescue, to learning and focus on surviving. In the end, Brian retrieves the survival kit from the sunken plane, and accidentally turns on the emergency transmitter thinking it was broken. Brian gets rescued, and goes back to his normal life, but with a very different view on things. I definitely enjoyed this book, and would use it in my future classroom. I think the appropriate grade level for this book would be sixth grade to twelfth grade. There is a chapter in this book that contains suicidal thoughts, and can definitely be heavy for the younger audience. A way I would incorporate this book in my classroom would be to focus on problem solving. Have groups of students take different survival problems faced in the story, and write out the problem, how Brian solved it, and the steps it took to solve it.