Today I’m introducing two books, both by the same author. One is a novel that is an old favourite, the story Gary Paulsen is most known for. The other is a very recently released memoir.
Hatchet is an adventure and survival story. Brian is flying across the Canadian wilderness on a visit to his father. The small plane in which he is travelling crashes and he is the only survivor. With only a windbreaker and a hatchet, Brian must use “his know-how and determination, and more courage than he knew he possessed, to survive”.
Earlier this year, Paulsen, now 80 years old, published a memoir of his youth, Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood. This story is one of adventure (most often not the good kind) and a childhood that sounds more like story than truth. And yet it is a story of what made him the man and the author he became.
Sadly, Gary Paulsen passed away a month ago. It is fitting therefore, to celebrate the man and his work, with old and new.
Genre: Adventure / Survival
Published: 1987 / 2021