Hatchet

This is all-action writing, full of the intensity of surviving against impossible odds. 13-year-old Brian watches the pilot of a small plane have a heart attack and then flies the plane until it crash lands in the Canadian Wilderness. With nothing, except a hatchet, and no experience, Brian attempts to survive nature and a series of calamities - attacks by porcupine, skunk, moose and tornado. Nature has to survive him too, with his constant need for food. By the end, after spending a painstaking day getting the survival kit from the plane, and now with all the 'comforts' he's previously lacked, he's rescued. It's the first touch of anything like humour.