Akron Public Library

A young boy relates his adventures during the year he spends living alone in the Catskill Mountains including his struggle for survival, his dependence on nature, his animal friends, and his ultimate realization that he needs human companionship.

Paulsen takes the wilderness adventure beyond self-preservation & makes teen Brian responsible for saving someone else. Because of his success surviving alone in the wilderness for fifty-four days, fifteen-year-old Brian, profoundly changed by his time in the wild, is asked to undergo a similar experience to help scientists learn more about the psychology of survival. "We want you to do it again." These words, spoken to Brian Robeson, will change...

Instead of being rescued from a plane crash, as in the author's book Hatchet, this story portrays what would have happened to Brian had he been forced to survive a winter in the wilderness with only his survival pack and hatchet.

The love between two teenage brothers helps to alleviate the harshness of their usually parentless life as they struggle to grow up.

All the many things a young child can do independently are demonstrated, (tying shoes, riding a bike, kicking a ball), but there is one thing the child cannot do alone.

After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.

Deeply wounded by her embittered mother's lack of sympathy for her aspirations, Elnora finds comfort in the nearby Limberlost Swamp, whose beauty and rich abundance provide her with the means to better her life.

Gr 5-9 --In this superb novel, Paterson deftly depicts a Lowell, Massachusetts fabric mill in the 1840s and a factory girl whose life is changed by her experiences there. Readers first meet 13-year-old Lyddie Worthen staring down a bear on her family' debt-ridden farm in the Vermont mountains. With her fierce spirit, she stares down a series of metaphorical bears in her year as a servant girl at an inn and then in her months under grueling conditions...

When her idyllic life on Rainbow Island is destroyed by the dragon, Obsidigon, Yu-Ning must embark on a dangerous journey, guided by her master teacher, Metatron, in hopes of overcoming the darkness attacking her home and also the scars of sadness marking her own heart.

The shortest kid in the second grade, James Moody, also known as Stink, learns all about the shortest president of the United States, James Madison, when they celebrate Presidents' Day at school.