Review: Hatchet

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



A quick caveat. My 2 stars are for the 2006 reprint edition with the green cover only.

It's like Simon & Schuster didn't even hire a copy editor. Someone made a bad scan of an early manuscript or something, and then didn't even check the copy! For example, page 69: "[The bear] was black, with a cinnamon-colored noise." This edition came out in 2006, well before the financial crisis, well before all the editors at all the publishing houses started getting fired in droves.

For a Newbery Honor book in reprint, you'd S&S would be careful. At any rate, when the misprinted words didn't make sense in the sentence it emphasized the odd, repetitive style Paulsen used in this book, but in unfavorable ways. I believe the first time I read it, this was part of the book's charm even though it was hard to get used to--it was a kind of writerly writing. This time, with the copy editing errors I had to endure not only the repetitive prose, but then I had to re-read a lot of those sentences, multiplying the effect unpleasantly.

Anyway, the book is on Pearl's 'battle of the books' list this year, and this was the only edition B&N had on the shelf. So I'm reading it aloud to her. Bonus, she threw up this evening right before I read Chapter 7 to her, the one with all the throwing up! I might get back in later and rate the book better if I can go down to the library and get an older edition. Lazy publishing just made me crabby.



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