BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSThirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is flying alone in a small bush plane over the Canadian wilderness to visit his father for the summer when the pilot suffers a massive heart attack and dies mid-flight. With no training and no radio contact, Brian has to keep the plane in the air long enough to find somewhere to land, and when the engine finally runs out of fuel, he has only seconds to bring the plane down. He crashes into a remote L-shaped lake with nothing but the clothes on his back and the hatchet his mother gave him as a parting gift, and with rescuers who may not know where to look, Brian has to figure out how to survive completely on his own in the deep Canadian north woods.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Hatchet
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Hatchet. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does an engine cough, roar violently for a second, and then die in sudden silence?
✓ Answer
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
The plane runs out of fuel without warning, right between Brian's seventeenth and eighteenth radio calls. The silence is broken only by the windmilling propeller and the wind past the cockpit. Brian pushes the nose down and throws up.
- First half
In what book does a flock of reddish-orange birds with thick beaks lead a boy straight to berry bushes?
✓ Answer
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Brian spots twenty or thirty brightly colored birds sitting in a pine tree. When they fly away, their color is a bright slash against the solid green. He follows them and finds them eating clusters of bright red berries hanging in bunches like grapes.
- First half
In what book does a boy pull eight quills out of his calf one by one in the dark?
✓ Answer
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
After the porcupine slaps Brian's leg with its tail, he finds eight stiff quills driven through his pants and into the fleshy part of his calf. He pulls them out one at a time, each one sending waves of pain up his leg. The pain spreads from sharp points to a hot smear.
- Second half
In what book does a boy think, "I must make a home for the sparks"?
✓ Answer
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Brian realizes that sparks need an incredibly fine, soft nest of material to stay alive long enough to become fire. He calls his carefully shredded birch bark a "spark nest" and treats it almost like building a tiny house for the fragile bits of flame.
- Second half
In what book does a boy eat six raw eggs, then lick the shells of the first five clean?
✓ Answer
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Brian eats six of the seventeen turtle eggs, each one getting easier to swallow. Still ravenous, he goes back and rips open the shells of the first five to lick every bit of yolk from inside. He even tries chewing the leathery shells but can't get them down.
- Near the end
In what book does a boy play dead in a lake while a moose calmly chews a lily pad root?
✓ Answer
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
After being slammed underwater twice, Brian is badly hurt with damaged ribs. He stays hunched over and pretends to be dead while the cow moose stands ten feet away, peacefully eating. He has to inch toward shore, freezing every time her back hair rises, moving only when the hair goes down.
