The Sign of the Beaver
book by Elizabeth George Speare
The Sign of the Beaver is a children's historical novel by American author Elizabeth George Speare, which has won numerous literary awards. It was published in February 1983, and has become one of her most famous works.
The idea for this novel came from a factual story that Elizabeth George Speare discovered in Milo, Maine about a young boy who was left alone for a summer in the wilderness and was befriended by a Native American boy named Attean and his grandfather, Saknis. The novel has been adapted into a television film titled Keeping the Promise.
Plot
The novel tells the story of 13-year-old Matthew James "Matt" Hallowell, an 18th-century American settler. He and his father build a log cabin in the wilderness of Maine, then he is left alone to guard it and his family's claim to the land while his father heads back to Quincy, Massachusetts to pick up his mother, sister, and the new baby and bring them back to the cabin. He learns how to survive and deal with difficult situations, getting help from a Native American boy named Attean and his family. When Matt fears his family will not show up, Attean asks him to join the Beaver tribe and move north with them.
“The Sign of the Beaver” enters the record as book by Elizabeth George Speare. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sign, Beaver and book can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The Sign of the Beaver” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sign, Beaver and book provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7764162. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Sign of the Beaver” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.