Comments on: Top 100 Children’s Novels #23: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

By: jake

jake — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:56:22 +0000

its a great book

By: Kyara

Kyara — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 06:12:19 +0000

This book, I remember reading in elementary. I absolutely loved it. It doesn’t need to be correct about every single little detail, it’s a children’s book, which is meant to broaden a child’s imagination. I imagined every bit of it as if it were a movie playing in my mind as I read. Now that I’m in my mid 20′s, if I go back to read it, I’ll think differently since I don’t have the same mindset. But for that age, it was absolutely perfect and had me unblinking for the longest.

By: Jess

Jess — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:21:05 +0000

Yeah, I didn’t like Hatchet, either. It was read aloud sometime in middle school and I loathed it (but then I’ve never been one for survival stories, except for Swiss Family Robinson).

By: Beverly

Beverly — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:34:42 +0000

I didn’t like it either. It’s not a terrible book, but there were three main flaws. One: the whole business about his mother’s supposed infidelity is overwrought and gratuitious -maybe an effort towards making it a “weightier” problem book. Two: in terms of sheer plausibility, it doesn’t hold a candle to My Side of the Mountain, Lord of the Flies, or most other survival stories I’ve read. Third: As a Kentuckian, who was in a tornado at age four, thank you very much, I am aggrieved that Brian is confronted by a tornado in the sub-taiga wilds of Canda. There are no tornadoes in that area of Canada. It just seems like Paulsen was throwing random challenges at Brian.

By: Mark Flowers

Mark Flowers — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:28:23 +0000

In answer to Sharon’s question (Does anyone not like Hatchet?): for the first–I dunno–20 years of my life or so, Hatchet was the only book I had ever started and not finished – on the grounds that I simply could not stand it. I have a feeling that if I went back and reread it I would like it very much, but there was at least one 10 year old who didn’t like it.