Hatchet (novel) - Definition and Overview

The book Hatchet is a Newberry award-winning wilderness survival novel written by Gary Paulsen.

In Hatchet, a thirteen-year-old boy named Brian is stranded alone in the South Dakotan wilderness when the pilot of the plane in which he is travelling to visit his father in the Canadian oil fields sufferes a heart attack and Brian is left to crash land the plane. He is left with only the clothes he is wearing and a hatchet. The book carries him through a summer of lone survival after which he discovers the plane's survival pack and is able to radio a call for rescue.

Paulsen followed Hatchet with additional novels about Brian. In the second, Brian's Winter, Paulsen answers (by popular demand, he says) the question of what would have happened if Brian had been forced to spend a winter in the Canadian wilderness. He accomplishes this device by simply asking the reader of Brian's Winter to backstep to the discovery of the survival pack and proceed assuming Brian did not radio for rescue.