Brian's Winter

Title: Brian’s Winter
Author: Gary Paulsen
Publisher: Scholastic
Place and year of publication: Broadway, New York 1996
Number of pages: 133
Where I found the book: CHS Library

Thirteen year old Brian Robeson is stranded in the Canadian wilderness. To survive he must rely on his intelligence, his instinct, and a hatchet. He had been in a plane crash. He had lived day by day for 54 days until he found the survival pack in the plane which has helped live. This book is a companion book to “Hatchet” and the plot is “what would happen if Brian had not been rescued by the plane. In "Hatchet” Brian has nothing to help him survive except the few items he happened to have with him when the plane crashed. The title Brian’s winter means that this book will be talking about Brian surviving the winter. It doesn’t mention what time this happens but we know it happens in winter time. In this story Brian is the only main character. The theme of this book is don’t lose hope in hardest situations and think of ways on how you can improve that situation. Brian is one of those people who are actually better off independently.

In this book there are 2 parts, the first part is fall and second part is winter. In The Fall Brian receives many signs that winter is coming but doesn’t notice them until the end of fall. In the survival package there was a rifle but Brian was not comfortable with it and it was running out of bullets so he stuck to his bow and arrow. One night as Brian sleeps in his shelter a bear comes and eats some of Brian’s fish. Brian then notices the bears blocking the shelter and Brian yells “Hey- get out of here”. The bear threw Brian across the campground leaving him scratched and soar in the morning. Brian then decided he would need to make a larger weapon he couldn’t use his small bow because it was good for smaller game like rabbits and fool birds. He then made 2 larger bows, one served as a spare. He could use this bow to defend himself and hunt bigger game. Later on in fall he with more and  more signs of winter coming, Brian decides to winter proof his shelter by filling in mud through the wooden walls like how he saw beavers do it. He also has a small fire inside his shelter. Other ways Brian gets ready for winter is by making a vest from rabbits skin to wear.

One day he decides to hunt bigger game so as he was outside his camp ground he saw a group of wolves eating a deer he waited for the wolves to finish and took what’s left of the deer for himself. There was a lot of deer meat left and lasted weeks. He would also make boots from the deer hide. A couple days later he notices he is laying between an angry bear and some venison he left out last night. He tried to move out of the way but the tightening string on his sleeping bag would not come loose so he was stuck in it. The bear scooped up and tossed him to the side. The bear is about to finish him off when he hears something. He turns around to a direct spray in the face from a skunk. The skunk comes by very often and threats to spray Brian so that Brian will toss her a piece of meat. He then named her Betty. With Brian low on meat he goes hunting and succeeds in getting a moose which he had a one on one scenario but he was Brian was safe at the end. Brian then realizes that he will be stuck here for a long time so he tries to make living in winter easier so he makes some snow shoes that prove to work. Brian looks near the lake and finds some Human footprints. Following those footprints he finds that just a few hundred meters from him a Native-American family is living there. They get supplies from an airplane that comes there every month. Brian gets to spend a month with them and he ends up really enjoying their company. When the month was over the plane came and took Brian with them to head back home to meet his family and friends.

MY THOUGHT

I chose this book because I am interested in survival type of stories and I thought that Hatchet was an amazing action book and I wanted to see how much better can this story get and it did get better. I think this book was really informative about the survival subject. It talked about how hunting and surviving didn’t only take skill but a good positive thinking and that is true. In the beginning I found it hard to pay attention to the book because there was only one character, but in the end Gary Paulsen introduced a lot of details keeping me glued to my story.  One other thing I liked about this book is being focused on just one idea, which kept me from getting lost in so many details and small stories inside the story. I recommend this to people interested in survival and action stories.

                                                      CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

This book was not written in a Christian perspective. But throughout this book Brian shows Christ-like behaviour even though he is the only character. Some ways he does that is not by swearing or cursing. Some ways Gary Paulsen could have made Brian more of a religious character is if he would talk about Brian praying to God for help and just talking to him. But this also depends on the author’s faith so Gary Paulsen may not be a Christian making that a reason why this book is not written from a Christian perspective. In the end Brian finally gets to talk with other humans who were Native Americans and after spending three weeks with them he feels as if he is part of the family and he doesn’t want to leave. Another way this reflects Christ-like behaviour is that Brian is acceptance of others and doesn’t judge.