Louisa Knight Goodreads.com Review:
Age: 10 - 12
Reading Level: 5th - 7th grades

Cleanliness:

Children's Bad Words
Mild Obscenities & Substitutions - 5 Incidents: demmed, golly
Scatological Terms - 2 Incidents: bl**dy (This is used biologically to describe blood flow but has been noted as this word is offensive in some cultures.)

Religious & Supernatural - 3 Incidents: A Native American speaks ritualistically to a fish and later to a bear after he kills them. An Indian Religious story told in response to a Bible story. The Indian says that he goes to find his "manitou," meaning spirit. (Indian coming of age ritual).

Romance Related - 1 Incident: Indians are mentioned a few times as being "half-naked," wearing only breechclothes.

Attitudes/Disobedience - 2 Incidents: A boy lies to a stranger saying his father would be back "anytime now" when in fact his father is away for months. (Lies for safety reasons). "The boy glowered at his grandfather, but he did not dare to speak again. With a black scowl, he stalked out of the cabin." To avoid offending his Indian friend, Matt lies about the character Friday not being a slave to Crusoe when he reads him the story. "When the Indian got that disdainful look in his eyes, Matt hated him." Later in the same paragraph, however, it describes how although they still don't like each other, they are no longer enemies.

Conversation Topics - 5 Incidents: A boy wonders if he actually could shoot a man, "even a criminal". The main characters read Robinson Crusoe together and a section of the story they read says," One of the captives they mercilessly slaughtered. The fire was set blazing for a cannibal feast." A pipe and smoking are mentioned a few times. Racism: "My grandmother hate all white men." His father had always "forbidden him to gamble."

Parent Takeaway
There is some racism throughout the story (from the Indians side), but as the two boys spend a summer together, this is overcome and a close friendship is formed. When winter is setting and it doesn't seem that Matt's father will ever return, the Indians tell Matt they will take care of him, but he must leave with them to a far away land. In the end, Matt decides he can't let his father down but must keep the house and land secure for if/when he does return.

AR: 4.9

Although he faces responsibility bravely, thirteen-year-old Matt is more than a little apprehensive when his father leaves him alone to guard their new cabin in the wilderness. When a renegade white stranger steals his gun, Matt realizes he has no way to shoot game or to protect himself. When Matt meets Attean, a boy in the Beaver clan, he begins to better understand their way of life and their growing problem in adapting to the white man and the changing frontier.

Elizabeth George Speare's Newbery Honor-winning survival story is filled with wonderful detail about living in the wilderness and the relationships that formed between settlers and natives in the 1700s.

READING LEVEL: 4.9 AR POINTS: 5.0
(Ages 9-11, grades 5-7)
Newberry Honor Book

What a great story full of adventure and survival for any young boy to read. Thirteen year olds back in those days were very mature and independent because they had to be. Today, most thirteen year olds that I know are like spoiled little baby pigs...squealing and complaining, selfish, expectant, wasteful, know-it-all and giving their parents hell, and especially lazy. I should know...I raised three of them. Hell, I was a know-it-all thirteen year old, myself. You can't teach somebody something if they already know everything, right?

In 1768, Matt Hallowell was almost 13 years old when his father left him alone in the Maine woods to watch over their new log cabin they just built on their purchased land while he headed back to Quincy, Massachusetts, to fetch Matt’s mom, sister, and their newly born baby. He would be gone for 6 weeks.

When a white scallawag of a fur trapper came traveling through, Matt fed him and let him sleep in the cabin, but by morning the stranger had left and had left with Matt’s shotgun, his best chance for food and protection, which his father had left with him.

When Matt got himself into trouble climbing a tree, trying to steal honey from a beehive and was stung all over, he could have died had it not been for Attean and his grandfather, from the local Beaver tribe, who had been watching him from a distance and came to his rescue.

In return for saving Matt’s life, Matt would agree to try and teach Attean to read white man’s words from the Robinson Crusoe novel, and so the ensuing friendship began. The friendship would slowly develop as the trust between the two developed, bringing each other into the other’s world and culture. Matt learned from Attean and his people how to survive out in the woods alone. But, more importantly, he learned that they weren’t all savages. In return, Attean learned that not all white people were hard, ruthless and careless people, even though the whites had killed his mother.

This is a great little book for young people to learn that not all people in any one culture are cut from the same mold. In other words, don’t judge a whole race of people, no matter what race, by the bad behavior of a few. Take the time to learn from each other because there is always something to learn. ( )

Historical Fiction middle grade novel set in frontier Maine.

13-year old Matt must survive at his family's new homestead while his father travels back to his old home in Massachusetts to retrieve his mother, sister and new baby sibling.
Matt suffers quite a few setbacks during the wait for his family to arrive. He is aided by a Native American leader and, a bit reluctantly at first, by his grandson, Attean, who is around Matt's age.

There is some racial sensitivity shown by Matt towards Attean (when reading portions of Robinson Crusoe), and I enjoyed the friendship which developed between Matt and Attean.
But there are other historical points, such as what homesteading did to Penobscot livelihood, which aren't fully explained. ( )