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Apr 29, 2017DBRL_KrisA rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This volume continues the story begun in Paulsen's previous book, Brian's Return. He had said about Return that it would be the last book written about Brian, but as he comments in this book's afterword, he had so many readers writing him to continue the story, literally hundreds of letters a day, that he decided to write another. And, he says, "I will no longer say that I will write no more about Brian and the north woods..." In this book, Brian slowly continues his journey north through Canada, eventually planning on meeting up with the Cree family who rescued him in the winter of his previous adventure. (This book continues the premise that Brian had not been rescued before winter had set in.) He's in no particular hurry, until he encounters (in the middle of the wilderness) a domesticated dog that has been injured by a bear. Concerned that a dog would be this far out in the woods, and that it would run away from (instead of toward) its humans when injured by the bear, Brian decides to figure out where the dog came from and (hopefully) reunite it with its people. The upshot of all this is that Brian discovers the scene of a bear attack, rescues one of the survivors, and hunts down the bear that made the attack. As Paulsen mentions in the afterword, the bear has been romanticized with cutesy characters like Winnie the Pooh and the teddy bear. On the other end of the spectrum, we see the sensationalized accounts of bear attacks. One of Paulsen's reasons for writing this book was to try to make it clear that bears look at humans (along with their pets and livestock) as meat, a food source. While most wild animals will flee rather than attack when exposed to humans, animals will attack when threatened, and a hungry predator will attack a human. (in fact, Paulsen says in his book that a bear would be more likely to attack a human than a dog.) The story is beautifully written, and I can relate to Brian's feelings about "civilized society" and his preference for the wild - where at least you know what to expect.