As his own original survival narrative, author Gary Paulsen depicts a series of life-altering events from his tumultuous youth. Hatchet would never have existed if it hadn’t been for his summer escape from a brutally negligent Chicago upbringing to a North Woods farmhouse at the age of five. He might not have been a reader if it hadn’t been for the librarian who gave him his first book when he was 13 years old. He might not have discovered his true calling as a storyteller if it hadn’t been for his desperate adolescent enlisting in the Army.
