Brian returns to the wilderness to discover where he truly belongs in this follow-up to the award-winning classic Hatchet from three-time Newbery Honor-winning author Gary Paulsen! As millions of...
Brian returns to the wilderness to discover where he truly belongs in this follow-up to the award-winning classic Hatchet from three-time Newbery Honor-winning author Gary Paulsen! As millions of...
Due to publisher restrictions, your digital library cannot purchase additional copies of this title. We apologize if there is a long holds list. You may want to see if other editions of this title are available from your digital library instead.
Due to publisher restrictions, your digital library cannot purchase additional copies of this title. We apologize if there is a long holds list. You may want to see if other editions of this title are available from your digital library instead.
Description-
Brian returns to the wilderness to discover where he truly belongs in this follow-up to the award-winning classic Hatchet from three-time Newbery Honor-winning author Gary Paulsen!
As millions of readers of Hatchet, The River, and Brian's Winter know, Brian Robeson survived alone in the wilderness by finding solutions to extraordinary challenges. But now that's he's back to ordinary life, he can't make sense of high school life. He feels disconnected, more isolated than he did alone in the north woods. How can Brian discover his true path in life, and where he belongs? The answer is to return.
Gay Paulsen skillfully explores the meaning of belonging and purpose, and reminds us of a crucial rule of the wilderness: expect the unexpected.
"Bold, confident and persuasive." —Publishers Weekly, Starred
"Paulsen bases many of his protagonist's experiences on his own, and the wilderness through which Brian moves is vividly observed." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred
Read all the Hatchet Adventures! Brian's Winter The River Brian's Return Brian's Hunt
Excerpts-
From the book
Brian sat quietly, taken by a peace he had not known for a long time, and let the canoe drift forward along the lily pads. To his right was theshoreline of a small lake he had flown into an hour earlier. Around him was the lake itself, an almost circular body of water of approximately eighty acres surrounded by northern forest--pine, spruce, poplar and birch--and thick brush.
It was late spring--June 3, to be exact--and the lake was teeming, crawling, buzzing and flying with life. Mosquitos and flies filled the air, swarming on him, and he smiled now, remembering his first horror at the small blood drinkers. In the middle of the canoe he had an old coffee can with some kindling inside it, and a bit of birchbark, and he lit them and dropped a handful of green poplar leaves on the tiny fire. Soon smoke billowed out and drifted back and forth across the canoe and the insects left him. He had repellant with him this time--along with nearly two hundred pounds of other gear--but he hated the smell of it and found it didn't work as well as a touch of smoke now and then. The blackflies and deerflies and horseflies ignored repellant completely--he swore they seemed to lick it off--but they hated the smoke and stayed well off the canoe.
The relief gave him time to see the rest of the activity on the lake. He remained still, watching, listening.
To his left rear he heard a beaver slap the water with its tail and dive--a warning at the intruder, at the strange smoking log holding the person. Brian smiled. He had come to know beaver for what they truly were--engineers, family-oriented home builders. He'd read that most of the cities in Europe were founded by beaver. That beaver had first felled the trees along the rivers and dammed them up. The rising water killed more trees and when the food was gone and the beaver had no more bark to chew they left. The dams eventually broke apart, and the water drained and left large clearings along the rivers where the beaver had cut down all the trees. Early man came along and started cities where the clearings lay. Cities like London and Paris were founded and settled first by beaver.
In front and to the right he heard the heavier footsteps of a deer moving through the hazel brush. Probably a buck because he heard no smaller footsteps of a fawn. A buck with its antlers in velvet, more than likely, moving away from the smell of smoke from the canoe.
A frog jumped from a lily pad six feet away and had barely entered the water when a northern pike took it with a slashing strike that tore the surface of the lake and flipped lily pads over to show their pale undersides.
Somewhere a hawk screeeeeennned, and he looked for it but could not see it through the leaves of the trees around the lake. It would be hunting. Bringing home mice for a nest full of young. Looking for something to kill.
No, Brian thought--not in that way. The hawk did not hunt to kill. It hunted to eat. Of course it had to kill to eat--along with all other carnivorous animals--but the killing was the means to bring food, not the end. Only man hunted for sport, or for trophies.
It is the same with me as with the hawk, Brian felt. He turned the paddle edgeways, eased it forward silently and pulled back with an even stroke. I will kill to eat, or to defend myself. But for no other reason.
In the past two years, except for the time with Derek on the river, in a kind of lonely agony he had tried to find things to read or watch that brought the woods to him. He missed the forest, the lakes, the wild as he thought of it, so much that at times he could...
About the Author-
Among Gary Paulsen's best-known titles are Brian's Winter and Soldier's Heart. This novel is based on his own life.
Reviews-
shade - Brian's return
If you've wanted to read a book but didn't know if it was good you'd look for a book review;
enough said here's my review now brains return is the fourth book of Brian's saga by Gary
paulsen.
Though it may not be as good as hatchet it is still a decent read
After Brian is rescued from being stranded in a forest alone with only a hatchet Brian starts to
realize that the city is not for him as he starts to doze off while in conversation and attack
savagely if he is attacked. After going through counseling he talks about live back in the forest
and starts accumulating items to return to the forest for a visit. In my opinion this book is mostly
filler for the next book in Brian's saga. I'd recommend this book to loyal fans of the series who'd
read every book to not miss a single beat in the story.
May 14, 2001 . In a starred review of yet another sequel to Hatchet, PW called the work "bold, confident and persuasive, its transcendental themes powerfully seductive." Ages 12-up.
Starred review from January 11, 1999 The appearance of yet another sequel to Hatchet may raise a few eyebrows, but Paulsen delivers a vigorous, stirring story that stands on its own merits. Whereas the previous continuations, The River and Brian's Winter, essentially offer more of the same survivalist thrills that have made Hatchet so popular, this novel goes further, posing a more profound question: How does someone go from living on the edge to polite membership in ordinary society? (Paulsen addresses the same theme, albeit more grimly, in his Civil War novel Soldier's Heart.) Here, Brian has returned to his mother's house and can barely reconcile the seemingly arbitrary demands of high school with the life-or-death challenges he surmounted during his months alone in the wilderness. With the aid of a counselor, Brian formulates what had been an almost instinctual, unacknowledged plan to revisit the bush, and this solo trip, not his interlude with his mother, marks the true "return" of the title. The few cliff-hangers are almost beside the point: the great adventure here is the embrace of the wild, the knowledge of life at its most elemental. Aside from its occasional use of YA conventions (e.g., the preternaturally sensitive counselor; jejune rhapsodies over the relevance of Shakespeare), this work is bold, confident and persuasive, its transcendental themes powerfully seductive. Ages 12-up.
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shade - Brian's return
If you've wanted to read a book but didn't know if it was good you'd look for a book review;
enough said here's my review now brains return is the fourth book of Brian's saga by Gary
paulsen.
Though it may not be as good as hatchet it is still a decent read
After Brian is rescued from being stranded in a forest alone with only a hatchet Brian starts to
realize that the city is not for him as he starts to doze off while in conversation and attack
savagely if he is attacked. After going through counseling he talks about live back in the forest
and starts accumulating items to return to the forest for a visit. In my opinion this book is mostly
filler for the next book in Brian's saga. I'd recommend this book to loyal fans of the series who'd
read every book to not miss a single beat in the story.
