Gary Paulsen

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...

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...

After having survived alone in the wilderness, Brian finds that he can no longer live in the city but must return to the place where he really belongs.

The author describes some of the dogs that have had special places in his life, including his first dog, Snowball, in the Phillippines; Dirk, who protected him from bullies; and Cookie, who saved his life.

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.

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.

Eager to enlist, fifteen-year-old Charley has a change of heart after experiencing both the physical horrors and mental anguish of Civil War combat.

Things get out of hand for a twelve-year-old boy when a neighbor convinces him to expand his summer lawn mowing business.

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.

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.