In this excerpt, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson overcomes the initial hurdles of survival in the Canadian wilderness.  As he wards off fears from his earlier encounter with a bear, Brian faces off with a porcupine in the dark of night.  Realizing that self-pity would get him nowhere, Brian figures out how to use his hatchet and natural materials to start a fire. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Medallion, 2010)

This lesson was created as part of the Basal Alignment Project, during which teachers created CCSS-aligned lessons for existing literary and information texts in basal readers. All page numbers and unit/week designations found in this lesson relate to the edition of the basal reader named above. If you are using a trade book or different edition of this title, the page/unit/week references in this lesson will not match. Consult the content referenced in the body of the lesson to determine appropriate page numbers for your text.