Brian's hunt

Review by Booklist Review

Gr. 6-10. Brian's back. And why not? After all, the hero of Hatchet, The River, Brian's Winter, and Brian's Return has by now become such a veteran survivor that even Paulsen's declaration (in Brian's Return) that he was done with his durable hero wasn't enough to keep the kid from an encore appearance. Brian, now 16, seems older than his years, a mighty hunter worthy of Hemingway. He turns his back on the so-called civilized world of his parents and retreats to the Canadian wilderness, at one with nature again. This time he rescues an injured dog and nurses it back to health. Lucky pooch. Less fortunate, Brian soon learns, are the Cree friends he met in earlier adventures. Their fate is the catalyst for the hunt of Brian's life. Less a novel than a very long short story, Paulsen's latest will satisfy his many fans, though it may be too slow to start and too obviously structured to win new friends for Brian. --Michael Cart Copyright 2004 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Gary Paulsen's latest, Brian's Hunt, Brian has traveled back to his beloved Canadian wilderness. Although Brian's Return (2001) was to be the last in the series, here the acclaimed hero hunts for a bear that has attacked his friends. With an ever-reverent view toward the power of nature, the author delivers another suspenseful adventure. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 6-9-In an author's note, Paulsen explains why he decided to reopen the story first begun in Hatchet (Bradbury, 1987). In this short installment, Brian, now 16, is back in the wilderness and encounters a savagely wounded dog. He makes his way to the lake island home of the Cree man he met in Brian's Return (Delacorte, 1999), where he discovers the tragedy that led to the dog's liberation. David and his wife have been partially eaten by a bear, which necessitates the hunt mentioned in the title and described in the final chapter. Throughout, the protagonist frequently remembers events from his original stranding, alludes to the problems he had faced trying to return to "civilization," and ultimately explains the special arrangement by which he has returned to the "bush" instead of high school. Although the story does stand alone, these many references will make the audience want to read (or reread) the earlier books. This story is not as well developed as the other episodes but it is a must-read for the hordes of existing Hatchet fans out there, and it may also serve to draw some new readers into the fold. An afterword discusses bear behavior and Paulsen's experiences with these animals.-Sean George, Memphis-Shelby County Public Library & Information Center, Memphis, TN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

In this sequel to [cf2]Brian's Winter[cf1], itself an alternate sequel to [cf2]Hatchet[cf1], Brian returns to the north woods more fully prepared, although still not ready for the horror he encounters after rescuing a stray, injured dog. This novel is really more of a short story padded with wilderness and survival lore, but Paulsen fans will enjoy the formula and forgive the sometimes wooden prose. From HORN BOOK Spring 2004, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Brian Robeson has returned to the Canadian wilderness, where his plane crashed two years before. Now 18, he feels he's in his element, a perfect place now that he's more seasoned. Soon, though, Brian finds a badly injured dog and two horribly mangled human bodies, and Brian the hunter becomes Brian the hunted, prey of a devilish rogue bear. The narrative is brisk, and Paulsen adds depth to Brian's characterization through a discussion of how learning to survive in the woods led to voracious reading and a thirst to know and understand things in civilization. In an afterword, Paulsen drives home his point that bears in the wilderness are not Teddy Bears or Winnie the Pooh, that humans are part of nature and sometimes prey; it may be "lessening" or humbling, but it's arrogant to think otherwise. Based on real incidents, this well-written sequel to Hatchet and its successors will be gobbled up by the author's legions of fans. (Fiction. 10+) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 He was in his world again. He was back. It was high summer coming to fall and Brian was back in the far reaches of wilderness--or as he thought of it now, home. He had his canoe and bow and matches and this time he'd added some dried food, beans and rice and sugar. He also had a small container of tea, which he'd come to enjoy. He had a small cook set, and a can to make little fires in the middle of the canoe; he put leaves on to make smoke to drive the flies and gnats and mosquitoes away. He had some salt and pepper and, almost a treat, matches. He still could not get over how wonderful it was to just be able to make a fire when he wanted one, and he never sat down to a cook fire without smiling and remembering when his life in the wilderness had begun. His first time alone. He dreamt of it often and at first his dreams sometimes had the qualities of nightmares. He dreamt he was sitting there in the small plane, the only passenger, with the pilot dying and the plane crashing into the lake below. He awakened sometimes with sudden fear, his breath coming fast. The crash itself had been so wild and he had been so out of control that the more he had grown in the years since, the more he had learned and handled difficult situations, the more insane the crash seemed; a wild, careening, ripping ride down through trees to end not in peace but in the water, nearly drowning--in the nightmares it was like dying and then not dying to die again. But the bad dreams were rare, rarer all the time, and when he had them at all now they were in the nature of fond memories of his first months alone in the bush, or even full-blown humor: the skunk that had moved in with him and kept the bear away; how Brian had eaten too many gut berries, which he'd later found were really called chokecherries (a great name, he thought); a chickadee that had once landed on his knee to take food from his hand. He had been . . . young then, more than two years ago. He was still young by most standards, just sixteen. But he was more seasoned now and back then he had acted young--no, that wasn't quite it either. New. He had been new then and now he was perhaps not so new. He paused in his thinking and let the outside world come into his open mind. East edge of a small lake, midday, there would be small fish in the reeds and lily pads, sunfish and bluegills, good eating fish, and he'd have to catch some for his one hot meal a day. Sun high overhead, warm on his back but not hot the way it had been earlier in the week; no, hot but not muggy. The summer was drying out, getting ready for fall. Loon cry off to the left, not distress, not a baby lost to pike or musky; the babies would be big enough now to evade danger on their own, almost ready to fly, and would not have to ride on their mother's backs for safety as they did when they were first hatched out. He was close in on the lily pads and something moved suddenly in the brush just up the bank, rustling through the thick, green foliage, and though it sounded big and made a lot of noise he knew it was probably a squirrel or even a mouse. They made an inordinate amount of noise as they traveled through the leaves and humus on the ground. And there was no heavy footfall feeling as there would be with a moose or deer or bear, although bear usually were relatively quiet when they moved. High-pitched screeeeee of hawk or eagle hunting and calling to his or her mate; he couldn't always tell yet between the cry of hawk and eagle. A yip of coyote, not wolf because it was not deep enough, and not a call, not a howl or a song but more a yip of irritation. He had heard that yip before when he'd watched a coyote hunting mice by a huge old pine log. The log had holes beneath it from one side to the other and the mice could dance back and forth beneath the log through the holes, while the coyote had to run around the end, or jump over the top, and the mice simply scurried back and forth under it to avoid him. The coyote tried everything, hiding, waiting, digging a hole big enough for himself under the log so he could move back and forth, but nothing worked. After over an hour of trying to get at the mice, he finally stood on top of the log looking down one side, then the other, raised his head and looked right at Brian as if he'd known Brian was there the whole time, and gave an irritated, downright angry yip. It was, Brian felt, a kind of swearing. Up ahead four hundred yards, a moose was feeding in the lily pads, putting its head underwater to pull up the succulent roots, and Brian knew it would be an easy kill if he wanted it. Canoes seemed such a part of nature to the animals in the wild--perhaps they thought canoes were logs--and if a person kept very still it was often possible to glide right up next to an animal near the water. In many states it was illegal to hunt from a canoe for just that reason. Brian had once canoed up next to and touched a fawn standing in the shallows. And with feeding moose it was simpler yet; all you had to do was scoot forward when the moose had its head underwater and coast when its head was up, looking around. Brian had plenty of arrows: a dozen and a half field points with sixty extra points and a hundred extra shafts and equipment to make more arrows, and two dozen broadhead arrows as well as fifty extra broadhead points with triple-blade heads the military had designed for covert work many years before. These were called MA 3s. Deadly. And if sharpened frequently, they were strong enough to reuse many times if you didn't hit a bone or miss and catch a rock. Looking at the moose, he salivated, thinking of the red meat and how it would taste roasted over a fire. But then he decided against it. The moose was a small bull, probably only six or seven hundred pounds, and nowhere near the fourteen or fifteen hundred pounds a large bull would weigh, but even so it was a lot of meat to deal with and he couldn't bring himself to waste anything he killed. He had gone hungry so long when he had first come to the bush. . . . Food had been everything and the thought of wasting any of it went against every instinct in his body. Even if he made a smoke fire and dried most of it in strips he would still lose some meat. . . . Still, he could see the shot. Close to the moose, close in but far enough away to avoid an attack, the bow already strung. Wait until he ducked under to draw the bow and then as soon as the head came up release the MA 3 just in back of the shoulder, under the shoulder blade and the broadhead would go straight into the heart. . . . From the Hardcover edition. Excerpted from Brian's Hunt by Gary Paulsen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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