# The Sign of the Beaver

**Author:** Elizabeth George Speare
**Grade range:** Grades 4–7
**First published:** 1983
**Page count:** 149
**ISBN-13:** `9780547348704`
**ISBN-10:** `0547348703`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/the-sign-of-the-beaver
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

A 1984 Newbery Honor Book Although he faces responsibility bravely, thirteen-year-old Matt is more than a little apprehensive when his father leaves him alone to guard their new cabin in the wilderness. When a renegade white stranger steals his gun, Matt realizes he has no way to shoot game or to protect himself. When Matt meets Attean, a boy in the Beaver clan, he begins to better understand their way of life and their growing problem in adapting to the white man and the changing frontier. Elizabeth George Speare’s Newbery Honor-winning survival story is filled with wonderful detail about living in the wilderness and the relationships that formed between settlers and natives in the 1700s. Now with an introduction by Joseph Bruchac.

## Where this book is assigned

### Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction

- **recommended** · 4th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 1984 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)
- **recommended** · 5th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 1984 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)
- **recommended** · 6th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 1984 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)
- **recommended** · 7th grade — [source: Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winners, via Wikipedia — 1984 Scott O'Dell Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O%27Dell_Award_for_Historical_Fiction)

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