My daughter finished Hatchet in two days and immediately started researching how to build a shelter out of branches in our backyard. She's also been leaving the hatchet from her toy tool kit in increasingly ominous places around the house. If your kid just closed the back cover on Brian Robeson's 54 days alone in the Canadian wilderness and is now looking at you like they could absolutely survive without grocery stores, here are seven books that won't talk down to them. Paulsen's genius was trusting kids to handle fear, hunger, and loneliness without a laugh track. These books do the same: wilderness survival, yes, but also the kind of stories that assume your reader can handle the weight.
Bookshop links are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you — and Bookshop supports indie bookstores.
1
The Wild Robot
by Peter Brown
Ages 8–12 · young adult · 2016 · ★ 4.08
A robot wakes up alone on a remote island and has to figure out how to survive among the animals. No manual, no humans, just Roz learning to build shelter, find food, and speak the language of the wilderness. Hatchet energy with a heart made of wires.
Pick this one if they loved Brian's problem-solving and learning from scratch.
Also on: 10 Chapter Books for 6-Year-Olds That Won't Bore Them or You, 8 Books for the Kid Who Says They Hate Reading, Summer Reading List by Grade
2
A Long Walk to Water
by Linda Sue Park
Ages 10–16 · young adult · 2010 · ★ 4.23
Salva is eleven when war separates him from his family in Sudan, and he walks. For months. Across a country, through refugee camps, with no food and no map. Linda Sue Park tells it with the same spare, unflinching honesty Paulsen brought to the plane crash.
Pick this one if they can handle real survival, not fictional.
3
Pax
by Sara Pennypacker
Ages 9–14 · young adult · 2016 · ★ 4.05
Peter releases his pet fox into the wild before his father ships him off to war. Then Peter changes his mind and walks back to find him, alone, through miles of dangerous terrain, with a broken foot. Told from both boy and fox, and Pennypacker doesn't blink.
Pick this one if they loved the boy-and-nature bond in Hatchet.
4
The War That Saved My Life
by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Ages 9–12 · chapter book · 2015 · ★ 4.4
Ada escapes her abusive mother in London during World War II and hides in the English countryside. No one's looking for her. She teaches herself to walk, to ride a horse, to survive in a world that told her she was worthless. Survival as defiance.
Pick this one if they want a protagonist who refuses to give up.
Also on: 10 Chapter Books for 10-Year-Olds Who Are Ready for Real Stories, Summer Reading List by Grade
5
Refugee
by Alan Gratz
Ages 10–16 · young adult · 2017 · ★ 4.66
Three kids, three time periods, three desperate escapes: Nazi Germany, 1990s Cuba, 2015 Syria. Alan Gratz cuts between them in short, relentless chapters, and every single one is about staying alive when the world wants you gone. Hatchet stakes, human-made disasters.
Pick this one if they're ready for survival in a war zone.
Also on: 10 Chapter Books for 10-Year-Olds Who Are Ready for Real Stories
6
The Thing About Jellyfish
by Ali Benjamin
Ages 12–18 · young adult · 2015 · ★ 4.05
Suzy's best friend drowns, and Suzy stops speaking. She becomes convinced a jellyfish sting caused it and plans a solo research expedition to prove it. Not wilderness survival, but the same lonely, obsessive problem-solving that made Hatchet hum.
Pick this one if they loved Brian's single-minded focus.
7
Wolf Hollow
by Lauren Wolk
Ages 10–14 · young adult · 2016 · ★ 4.26
Annabelle grows up in 1943 Pennsylvania, where a World War I veteran lives alone in the woods and the kids leave him alone. Then a bully moves to town and targets him, and Annabelle has to decide what kind of person she'll be. Quiet, moral, and as tense as any bear encounter.
Pick this one if they want courage without a hatchet.
Want more like this? Try our book finder — filter by age, format, and what your kid actually likes.
Open the book finder →
