Here's your plot: Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland goes with her family for a walk in the woods. She gets separated and hopelessly lost. That's basically it. No real plot twists, very little narration that follows other characters besides her (just the occasional switch away to show what her family is going through, and a bit else), etc.
So basically, she gets lost in the woods, and just about every bad thing you can imagine either happens to her, or almost happens to her.
Getting stung by wasps. Falling off a cliff. Starving to near death. Vomiting from some bad food or water. Hallucinating, be it from hallucinogenic food, or simple lack of food and energy.
As a book with barely any plot, it's held together by the events that occur, and the sheer resilience and personality of the main character.
Trisha is both desperate and resourceful, and does everything she knows to survive. She doesn't know a whole lot, though. She collects berries when possible, drinks water that sometimes makes her sick, and at one point even manages to trap a fish into a spot where she can easy catch it, gut it, and eat it raw. She creates or finds shelter to avoid rain and thunderstorms.
Trisha's emotions - both negative and positive - are raw and real. We see her revulsion at some of what she has to walk through, and what she has to do to survive. And we see her at times simply accept her fate. She eats the raw head of a fish and tries not to think about the fact that she just put its head, eyeballs and all, in her mouth. She's too hungry to even be grossed out. We even see her in some lighter moments, expressing awe at a family of deer, replaying conversations in her head with her best friend "Pepsi" Robichaud, becoming excited over the possibility of being rescued, and even laughing at some funny thoughts that she has.
Trisha is very much a kid, and her personality is a mixture of childlike and world-weary. She experiments with profanity, tossing it out once in a while or thinking it, sometimes using the curse words incorrectly as kids tend to do. She throws a tantrum at one point about the sheer unfairness of her whole situation. Later on, she decides that life is simply unfair, period, and bad things can happen at random to anyone, and that it's up to everyone to make the most of it. Trisha also experiences the crushing loneliness of being away from human civilization, and uses her Walkman's radio to listen to baseball broadcasts and news broadcasts to see if people are searching for her.
The book does just about as much as it can with the premise. There's moments of hope, moments of hopelessness, and the full gamut of emotions is experienced. Just about every geographical feature of the woods is explored, from cliffs to streams to marshes. Just about any type of thing that can happen does happen at some point. It's a simple premise, but it's explored in every way possible, making for a fun experience.
A 9-year-old gets lost in the woods and everything that can happen, happens
Here's your plot: Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland goes with her family for a walk in the woods. She gets separated and hopelessly lost. That's basically it. No real plot twists, very little narration that follows other characters besides her (just the occasional switch away to show what her family is going through, and a bit else), etc.
So basically, she gets lost in the woods, and just about every bad thing you can imagine either happens to her, or almost happens to her.
Getting stung by wasps. Falling off a cliff. Starving to near death. Vomiting from some bad food or water. Hallucinating, be it from hallucinogenic food, or simple lack of food and energy.
As a book with barely any plot, it's held together by the events that occur, and the sheer resilience and personality of the main character.
Trisha is both desperate and resourceful, and does everything she knows to survive. She doesn't know a whole lot, though. She collects berries when possible, drinks water that sometimes makes her sick, and at one point even manages to trap a fish into a spot where she can easy catch it, gut it, and eat it raw. She creates or finds shelter to avoid rain and thunderstorms.
Trisha's emotions - both negative and positive - are raw and real. We see her revulsion at some of what she has to walk through, and what she has to do to survive. And we see her at times simply accept her fate. She eats the raw head of a fish and tries not to think about the fact that she just put its head, eyeballs and all, in her mouth. She's too hungry to even be grossed out. We even see her in some lighter moments, expressing awe at a family of deer, replaying conversations in her head with her best friend "Pepsi" Robichaud, becoming excited over the possibility of being rescued, and even laughing at some funny thoughts that she has.
Trisha is very much a kid, and her personality is a mixture of childlike and world-weary. She experiments with profanity, tossing it out once in a while or thinking it, sometimes using the curse words incorrectly as kids tend to do. She throws a tantrum at one point about the sheer unfairness of her whole situation. Later on, she decides that life is simply unfair, period, and bad things can happen at random to anyone, and that it's up to everyone to make the most of it. Trisha also experiences the crushing loneliness of being away from human civilization, and uses her Walkman's radio to listen to baseball broadcasts and news broadcasts to see if people are searching for her.
The book does just about as much as it can with the premise. There's moments of hope, moments of hopelessness, and the full gamut of emotions is experienced. Just about every geographical feature of the woods is explored, from cliffs to streams to marshes. Just about any type of thing that can happen does happen at some point. It's a simple premise, but it's explored in every way possible, making for a fun experience.