Tough Boy and Sister Author:Kirkpatrick Hill The death of their drunken father strands ten-year-old Toughboy and his younger sister at a remote fishing cabin on the Yukon River near Ruby, Alaska, where they spend a summer trying to cope with dwindling food supplies and hostile wildlife. — Following their parents' deaths, two young Athabascan Indians work together to survive in the famil... more »y's remote fish camp on the Yukon River. Hill ably depicts a lifestyle unfamiliar to many continental Americans. Through Toughboy and Sister, she illuminates the larger community of Athabascans, showing their values and strong belief in family ties. Athabascan words are smoothly explained in the text. Toughboy and Sister are not idealized characters; they learn to get along because they have to, and each tries to be strong to reassure the other. Readers will enjoy the idea of children their own age figuring out how to cook, fish, and kill a bear. The story is quietly told, which may be its biggest problem; while the setting and characters are vivid and appealing, the dramatic aspects of the tale are understated. Toughboy and Sister accept their father's death with a worldly wise sense of resignation. A confrontation with a bear, forshadowed in the jacket art and throughout the story, is oddly anticlimactic. The tone and ideas are similar to those in O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins (Houghton, 1960) and Paulsen's Hatchet (Bradbury, 1987), but Toughboy and Sister lacks their depth and excitement.« less