Gary Paulsen
3) The river
Author
Description
Paulsen takes the wilderness adventure beyond self-preservation & makes teen Brian responsible for saving someone else. Because of his success surviving alone in the wilderness for fifty-four days, fifteen-year-old Brian, profoundly changed by his time in the wild, is asked to undergo a similar experience to help scientists learn more about the psychology of survival. "We want you to do it again."
These words, spoken to Brian Robeson, will change...
4) Brian's hunt
Author
Description
Two years after he survived a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, a sixteen-year-old returns to the wild where he feels he belongs. In a temporary camp on the way to visit his friends, Brian Robeson finds a dog, wounded and whimpering. The dog is badly hurt, and as Brian cares for it, he worries about his friends. His instincts tell him to head north, quickly. With his new companion at his side, and with a terrible, growing sense of unease, he...
5) Hatchet
Author
Description
Brian is on his way to Canada to visit his estranged father when the pilot of his small prop plane suffers a heart attack. Brian is forced to crash-land the plane in a lake--and finds himself stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness with only his clothing and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present before his departure.
Brian had been distraught over his parents' impending divorce and the secret he carries about his mother, but now he is truly...
6) Tracker
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Description
Only thirteen, John must track a deer in the Minnesota woods for his family's winter meat, and in doing so finds himself drawn to the doe who leads him and coming to hate his role as hunter.
7) Dogsong
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Description
A fourteen-year-old Eskimo boy who feels assailed by the modernity of his life takes a 1400-mile journey by dog sled across ice, tundra, and mountains seeking his own "song" of himself.
8) Mr. Tucket
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Description
In 1848, while on a wagon train headed for Oregon, fourteen-year-old Francis Tucket is kidnapped by Pawnee Indians and then falls in with a one-armed trapper who teaches him how to live in the wild.
11) Alida's Song
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Description
A fourteen-year old boy who has been neglected by irresponsible parents spends a wonderful summer on a farm where his grandmother cooks for two elderly brothers.
13) The haymeadow
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Description
Fourteen-year-old John comes of age and gains self-reliance during the summer he spends up in the Wyoming mountains tending his father's herd of sheep.
14) Northwind
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Description
When a deadly plague decimates his fishing village, an orphan named Leif is forced to take to the water in a cedar canoe. He flees northward, following a wild, fjord-riven shore, navigating from one danger to the next. The deeper into his journey he paddles, the closer he comes to his truest self as he connects to the heartbeat of the ocean, the pulse of the landscape.
15) The monument
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Thirteen-year-old Rocky, self-conscious about the braces on her leg, has her life changed by the remarkable artist who comes to her small Kansas town to design a war memorial.
16) Dogteam
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On a moonlit winter night, a team of dogs pulls a sled, taking the narrator and readers on a wondrous ride through the snow, into and out of the woods. It is a ride you'll wish would never end.
19) The foxman
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Description
A town boy sent to live on a remote wilderness farm forms a friendship with an elderly, disfigured man who teaches him many things.
20) Nightjohn
Author
Appears on list
Description
Twelve-year-old Sarny's brutal life as a slave becomes even more dangerous when a newly arrived slave offers to teach her how to read.
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