Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Woods Runner is not the type of book I would typically pick up and read. That being said, I read this book in one day. Once I got going, I couldn't stop. The book is fast-paced but not easy to read, because of the way Paulsen describes the war scenes. Gary Paulsen tells a story about the Revolutionary War through a 13 year old boy named Samuel.

Samuel and his family live in the forest in Pennsylvania. Samuel's parents are not really forest people, but they were trying to avoid the war. Samuel had gone out hunting bear one day, when he noticed smoke in the distance. At first, he thought it could be a forest fire, but then he realized it wasn't dry enough. Samuel has a keen sense of the forest and has developed very strong survival skills. He realizes that it is his house that is on fire. He runs as fast as possible, but he finds five of his neighbors dead, all the houses burned to the ground. His parents, though, have been taken hostage; he can tell from the tracks. He begins tracking his family, which leads him on a wild adventure through the forest and eventually to New York City to try to find his family. He meets several people, some protecting him, some trying to kill him, and he can never quite tell until it's almost too late. Getting through the British army in New York City is far different than hunting bear and deer in the woods, but Samuel has to try...

After each chapter in this book is a non-fiction explanation of different aspects of the Revolutionary War. At first, they were distracting, but then they helped me understand more about what was going on in the book. Overall, I really liked this book, and I know that it will be flying off the library shelves this Fall.


Here are some of my favorite quotes:

If you listened, complete quiet could speak worlds. -- Woods Runner

Actually, the forest had embraced him, took him in, made him a woods runner. -- Woods Runner

His whole life, everything in it and around it, was different now, torn and gutted and forever changed from all that it had been, and it would never be the same. -- Woods Runner



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