The Tent by Gary Paulsen

I am a fan of Gary Paulsen. Tween’s fantastic fifth grade teacher introduced us to Paulsen as an author by assigning Hatchet – the story of a boy who survives a plane crash all alone in the wilderness. We then went on to read another about a boy surviving getting lost in the woods hunting a deer – again – boy alone versus nature – much excitement – great tales. The Tent was a little unexpected. It was the tale of a father and son traveling together as fraudulent preachers. Since I was reading this one with my third grader, I had to do some editing of the parts where preacher dad starts sleeping with the town tramp at each stop leaving preacher son alone in the hotel. Geez – I really should have previewed before we started! But the story is good, the characters are interesting and it enthralled youngest. So in the end – thumbs up.