#tbt: Hatchet by Gary Paulson

Image: Simon & Schuster

#tbt features Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. Hatchet tells the story of Brian Robeson, an unhappy thirteen-year-old with a secret. He is heading to oil fields in Canada to spend the summer with his father after his parents' recent divorce. The pilot has a heart attack and dies enroute and Brian crash lands the plane into a lake. He survives with nothing but the hatchet his mother gifted him as he left. This gripping read was published in 1987 and won a Newbery Honor in 1988. It was adapted for film in 1990 under the name, A Cry in the Wild. Gary Paulsen wrote five other books about Brian, including one that had an alternate ending to Hatchet.