Woods Runner

With a smoky voice redolent of musket fire, Danny Campbell recounts the fictional story of Samuel, a teen caught in the War for Independence. When his parents are brutally kidnapped by the British and their allies, the Iroquois, Sam must rescue them without a thought for his own safety. With his vast knowledge of the woods and the help of many people, each delineated by Campbell with unique vocalizations and accents, Sam succeeds--but at a harrowing cost. Campbell skillfully employs pace and projection to build suspense and convey Paulsen's page-turning action. Campbell uses a deeper, flatter tone to differentiate brief paragraphs of background information appended to each chapter. An afterword adds more facts to this gripping story of the Revolutionary War. M.M.O. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Starred review from December 21, 2009
Set during the American Revolution, Paulsen's (Hatchet
) slim novel candidly and credibly exposes the underbelly of that war. Sam is a skilled hunter with an instinctive knowledge of the western Pennsylvania forest—a “woods runner.” When word of fighting between the British and the colonists reaches his family, the 13-year-old realizes that his life will change (“The loud outside world his parents had escaped by moving to the frontier had found them”). It is a brutal change: Sam returns from a hunting expedition to find houses in their settlement burned to the ground and the scalped bodies of neighbors. His harrowing quest to locate and rescue his parents—taken prisoner by the culprits, British soldiers aided by Iroquois—involves a nearly fatal run-in with a tomahawk-wielding native; a narrow escape from marauding Hessian mercenaries; and a fortuitous encounter with a Scottish tinker who's a spy for the patriots. Paulsen fortifies this illuminating and gripping story with interspersed historical sections that offer details about frontier life and the war (such as technology, alliances, and other period information), helping place Sam's struggles in context. Ages 12–up.