Touching Spirit Bear
By Ben Mickaelson

Published by HarperTeen (2005)

Summary:
Cole is a 9th grader who has serious anger issues. When he beats up a fellow classmate so badly he suffers brain damage, Cole must suffer the consequences of either jail time or a kind of American Indian reform called Circle Justice. Refusing jail time, he is sent to a remote area of Alaska to learn how to live adn survive on his own and hopefully learn valuable lessons, even if he is not sure what they are yet - as long as his pride and anger don't get the best of him.

My Review:
This intentions of this book were good and they ways the author presents the reform and forgiveness process in interesting but sometimes the book felt like it was all preaching. There was hardly any character development for Cole, we are just presented with an angry kid bashing another student's head into the sidewalk so it was hard to get into character-wise. Cole's process of resolving his issues has steady progress and the reader can keep up but sometimes it seems like the author is resolving things in a way that other young adults aren't going to understand and it happens so ideally that sometimes it seemed unrealistic.

WARNING: Violence, anger, child abuse, trying to survive in the wild, and being mauled by a bear are some of the things Cole has to face. The boy he beats up also suffers brain damage and is suicidal.