When the freighter on which they are traveling is torpedoed by a German submarine during World War II, a twelve-year-old white boy, blinded by a blow on the head, and an old Negro are stranded on a small desert island in the Caribbean where the boy acquires a new kind of vision, courage, and love from his old companion.

When fifteen-year-old Francis and two younger children lose their way in the wilderness of the Southwest, they face capture at the hands of dangerous men.

In 1945, twelve-year-old Patrick and his younger brother Teddy stow away on the U.S.S. Indianapolis in a desperate attempt to get back to the Philippines where they last saw their parents, just before the Japanese invasion. But when the ship is sunk, they find themselves clinging to a piece of debris without food or water and with hungry sharks circling below.

"Instead of being rescued from a plane crash, as in the author's book Hatchet, this story portrays what would have happened to Brian had he been forced to survive a winter in the wilderness with only his survival pack and hatchet"--Title verso page.

After his experiences surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness, sixteen-year-old Brian finds it increasingly difficult to live as a normal high school student and begins planning to return to the place where he feels he really belongs.

The Swiss Family Robinson (German: Der Schweizerische Robinson) is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family shipwrecked in the East Indies en route to Port Jackson, Australia.Written by Swiss pastor Johann David Wyss and edited by his son Johann Rudolf Wyss and illustrated by his son Johann Emmanuel Wyss, the novel was intended to teach his four sons about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world...