Why is it read in middle school as good literature...

Why is it read in middle school as good literature? The prose is beyond awful and it basically details the kid's struggles in the wilderness without really a plot (he's rescued just by dumb luck).

I read this in elementary school and it took me forever to realize it was a hatchet in the foreground on the cover. I was a dumbass.

That being said, holy shit that cover is atrocious.

I read this in middle school and I thought it was

>fun

Like maybe reading is a worthwhile habit I should do it more often. What a fucking sin.

Nice digits. I remember reading this book, but I don't remember the story or anything. I think I read it in 3rd grade, so I don't think it's supposed to have impressive prose or anything deep going on.

It was alright. I mean, it's basic, but for kids in highschool reading about a highschool aged kid in a situation they might see themselves works. Hell of a lot more enjoyable than The Giver. That shit's fuckin' trash.

Well, Hatchet was just bad writing and one of the more flagrant examples (probably the worst that wasn't some avant-garde trash by a "woman of color"). I guess Hatchet was okay in that wasn't pretentious or propaganda, but I still hated it.

>be in sixth grade
>some self published author comes to our school to talk about his job
>always hated English class and writing
>tells us he hated reading as a kid until he read the Hobbit
>hmm let me check it out
>liked reading ever since

I also read the hatchet around that time. I think middle schools should recommend the Hobbit over it but it's all politics

Hatchet is a literary masterpiece when compared to "my side of the mountain."
At least hatchet had a believable premise, not lol lemme run away from home and live inside a tree.

Kys

Hatched is a gateway drug to uncle ted

its textural

>It is the first novel of five in the Hatchet series.
for what reason

>that part where he finds the decomposing corpse of the pilot

Hatchet is fucking cool. Get yourself checked for homosexuality

I liked the Giver a lot as a kid. It's themes are very on the nose, but it was probably the first thing I read that got me thinking about stories in terms of thematic significance, instead of just how much I liked their plot.

This was my favorite book as a kid. I grew up in a small town with lots of woods and I think it helped foster a lifelong love for the outdoors. I also really liked some forgotten book about kids being shipwrecked on a tropical island (no, not LOTF, it was was written somewhat recently) and the only thing I remember is that a kid got a wooden spear through his leg and the other kids had to perform a makeshift surgery to same him or something.

Holes was the patrician elementary school book

Captain Underpants honorary mention

The most intense shit I'd read at that age.

>prose is beyond awful

Well in elementary school, they're probably just trying to get kids into reading in the first place, not start them off on Infinite Jest.

Fukken this

I remember my mom gave me a book by Gary Paulsen about going through puberty when I was in 6th grade.

I read a ya novel series which I am almost certain was also called Hatchet, about a young boy who gets lost from his father or abandoned and has to survive by himself out in the wild west, and he briefly follows Indians, does anyone remember what this series was actually called because I can't find it now?

>the giver is bad
Literally the worst opinion I've observed on Veeky Forums in a while good job

>Good prose
>Infinite Jest

this
also you're fucking retarded, all kids should have to read The Giver, A Brave New World, Animal Farm and 1984; every single person I've ever met who hasn't read them or doesn't like them or agrees with the dystopia has no soul and is reprehensible in every respect. They're not examples of good literature, they are however extremely instructive, and since no one in Academia, who happen to be the only people who would be allowed this kind of podium, cares to actually make the necessary arguments and to deliver the necessary rhetoric to combat these forces, I think some mediocre to sometimes unbearably bad prose is justifiable in order to keep them at bay.

Hate me for suggesting it, but anyone here with a conscience is aware how badly we ignored these people's warnings. Its already too late, but if you had to take some preventative measures, reading this whole genre plus of course Fahrenheit 451 is basically essential to preventing the kind of stupidity you see from liberals and conservatives on reddit and /pol/ respectively. You can't really instruct children in political philosophy especially since their parents are probably indoctrinated cattle who would dissuade them with appeals to authority and emotion. With middlebrow dystopian lit you can embed their subconscious psyche's with these messages without worrying about fighting tooth-and-nail with administrators and law makers, whose interest it is in to completely obfuscate these dangers.

They'll likely need to be an internet era equivalent to this written by some middlebrow hack or if we're lucky someone of great talent, to do the same thing to the new generations minds. Its awful that it has to be clandestine like that, but we live in a completely controlled society and I can't imagine any other route for preventing further psychic damage to the race.

my dad read me The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when I was like 6
in junior high I decided to re-read them on my own
The Hobbit held up pretty well, but I was checking out of LotR before they even got to Rivendell, I know it wasn't supposed to be as much of a rollicking adventure but it was just dry and slow, and then I skipped ahead to Rivendell and it was still dry and slow and he had fucking signing or poetry, I couldn't figure out the rhythm of it or the significance, I pretty much dropped it after that
I read the fuck out of the appendices though
I had a whole bunch of papers where I transcribed and transliterated a bunch of Elvish and Dwarvish and the English runes, it got me into languages

well there was the stuff about his dad, but it wasn't explored that often or that deeply
he's rescued because he found the strength to survive and to overcome the spookiness of getting supplies out of the crashed plane

I see it as escapist literature for young'uns
Nothing is more liberating than surviving on your own in the wilderness, no parents, no homework, no fat boy with blonde curls flicking your ears from the seat behind you on the bus; just you, your hatchet, and your resourcefulness

I fucking love this book, because I hated most other books I read around that time, it is a massive dickslap in the face of your average kid's melodrama novel. Children's novels as an industry are absolutely full of writers who write nonstop bullshit about kid issues they don't want to hear about in books, divorce, having to move away from home, basically adults writing self therapy recollecting on their boring ass lives and selling it as "Adolescent Drama". I never understood why every damn book, even many of the fantasy books and the like, had to shoehorn in the book life issues bullshit when I just wanted the adventure.
Then Gary Paulsen comes along, the absolute madman, and sets up the first few pages of Hatchet in this manner, Brian travels by plane to visit his recently divorced father yawn I've read it 20 times before. And then kills the thing carrying the plot, literally killing the pilot off with a fucking heart attack and violently crashing the plane into a lake, and then spends 90% of the rest of the book just describing an innawoods situation Brian is stuck in.
He put in the most minimal amount of obligatory melodrama to ascribe some deeper meaning as an excuse to market an innawoods stories to kids, and it was great even if it was written like shit.