Hatchet - Gary Paulsen

⭐8/10

I am certainly one to be won over by nostalgia and revisit my old favorites even though doing so is mostly just a good way to ruin fond memories. Still, I figured I could get through it in a weekend and it also helps me understand what books for kids are like. I mean, this was my absolute favorite as a kid for a good two years, and I must have read this book a dozen times. I was super encouraged when my nephew told me it was also his very favorite for a time. 

But I didn't read it in a weekend because this book was rough to start with. The writing style is dramatic and insufferable for the first chapters and not a lot of fun to read. But it gets better throughout and by the end it was pretty clear why I would have liked it as a kid. You really do learn so much about survival reading something like this, and I remember feeling so smart, like I could have done all this if I was lucky enough to be stranded in the Canadian wilderness. 

But alas, a child who reads Hatchet becomes an adult who watches Alone, and so I know this survival material very well. Reading about Brian fumbling around, discovering all this stuff I know already was pretty uninteresting at times and a slog to get through even if it only takes a few hours. Of course this book wasn't written for 33 year old men so I won't hold it against it, just a funny thought I had. 

So it's impossible to rate this book, and despite my negative comments I did have fun walking down memory lane, even to the point of having vivid memories of where I was when I read this book for the first time. When that tornado rolled in? Oh, I remember being in Mr Scratch's portable doing DEAR time and losing my shit. And then by the end I knew I wanted to read Brian's Winter, my true favorite, so it couldn't have been too bad, right? I'll give it 8 stars to at least he somewhat true to my childhood self.