135 pages
Published Aug. 30, 1984 by Dell.
Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills. Until the day his father returns to their cabinnbsp in the Maine wilderness, twelve-year-old Matt must try to survive on his own. Although Matt is brave he's not prepared for an attack by swarming bees and he's astonished when he's rescued by an Indiann chief and his grandson, Attean. As the oys come to know each other Attean learns to speak English while Matt becomes a skilled hunter. Though many months have passed, there's no sign of Matt's family. Then Attean asks Matt to join the Beaver tribe and move north. Should Matt abandon his hopes of ever seeing his family again and move on to a new life?
I remember this book from childhood. It was still pretty good to reread it as an adult.
This was a sweet book for teaching empathy, it is about a boy of ten or so in recently settled Maine who is left alone in a desolate cabin for a summer while his dad runs an errand.. he befriends a few Indians and they help him survive, and he learns that his own people are, of course, not so very nice to the natives.
