Brian's Return by Gary Paulsen

Gary Paulsen is famous for Hatchet, the first of his books about Brian, a young teen who had to learn how to survive in the wild in Northern Canada. In Brian’s Return, Brian had been found and rescued two years earlier, and he went back to school and tried to get along with people, but he found that he could not fit into society after surviving on his own in the woods. Life as most people knew it did not seem real to him anymore.
After sharing his experiences with a counselor who was very interested in what Brian had learned, it became clear that Brian needed to go back. The first time, Brian had been stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash, and all he had to work with was a hatchet that his mom had given him. He told his parents that he was going back to Canada to visit the Native American family that had rescued him, but he neglected to tell them that for most of the trip he would be on his own. This time he packed lots of gear to make it easier than it had been the first time.
This is a good book for escape because it takes the reader into another world. At the end of the book there is an author’s note where he explains that most of the things Brian experienced were very close to what he had actually experienced. That made the book much more meaningful to think about how this could all actually happen!

Review by David Dunkerton