The book I chose to read was “The Haymeadow” by Gary Paulsen. The book is a western novel. The story takes place in Wyoming. This book was published in March of 1994 by Dell Publishing, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. The book is 195 pages long. When one of Three Bar S’s ranch hands is diagnosed with cancer is the start of a very long summer for fourteen year old John Barron when he is expected to watch over six thousand sheep in the mountains of Wyoming. The main character of the book is John Barron. He just turned 14 years old in the beginning of the book. He has never really impressed his father in life but plans to change that when he has to run six thousand sheep in the mountains of Wyoming. He was expecting to go to the hay meadow with one of their ranch hands, Tinckner, until they found he had cancer. Now John would be the only one going to the hay meadow. He will be…show more content… “He grabbed her mane, pulled himself the rest of the way up, and they arrived just in time to see Peg get a chunk off the end of the trail on a coyote that had grabbed a lamb and was trying to carry it off.” “But what about the drive to the hay meadow?” Gary Paulsen establishes character characterization by saying “It was like looking at himself. The resemblance between him and his grandfather was uncanny. Even John’s father noted it.” His goal was to just write a good book for young adults. A couple strengths of this book are that I can connect with the book because I had a great grandfather that everyone says I was exactly like. Also I own sheep too. This book was also very well written, meaning that it was easy to read. Some weaknesses of this book was that there were some grammatical errors in terms of southern cowboy slang. Otherwise it was a very good book. I think that any teen who enjoys reading a nice book about something western would very much enjoy this