THE RIVER b<i> y Gary Paulsen (Delacorte Press: $15; 132 pp.).</i>

Unless summer school looms, vacation reading for most teen-agers means the menu at the burger emporium and starting times for movie blockbusters. Alas, for the young dudes entering seventh grade this September, some Los Angeles schools have a summer reading list. But fortunately, this list includes “Hatchet”--Gary Paulsen’s Newbery Honor antecedent to “The River.” Certain librarians credit “Hatchet” for luring young males into the reading habit.

In “Hatchet,” 13-year-old Brian Robeson survives a small plane crash and 54 days alone in the Canadian north woods equipped with only his tattered clothes and a hatchet. In “The River,” Brian is back--two years older and eons wiser. A psychologist from a government survival school persuades Brian to return to the wilderness and reprise his trials, all to be duly recorded and scrutinized by the professional. Equipped with only a knife and a hand-drawn map, Brian displays his self-taught survival skills, but a natural disaster strikes--and the research trip turns into a taut ordeal of human ingenuity battling the eat-or-be-eaten canon of the wild.

A one-time participant in the Iditarod (the rigorous annual Alaskan dog-sled race), Paulsen brings firsthand knowledge and wary regard of nature to “The River.” His narrative is economical and fast moving. Lamentably, a sequel, like love, can be wonderful and different but never as memorable as the first time. Nevertheless, if your son or grandson has “Hatchet” on his list, Brian’s further adventures in “The River” will keep the pages turning.

IN CAVERNS OF BLUE ICE by Robert Roper (A Sierra Club Book/Little, Brown: $14.95; 188 pp.).

Louise DeMaistre, the heroine of Robert Roper’s “Caverns,” survives avalanches, ice storms and chauvinism to ultimately breathe the rarefied air of the mountain-climbing elite.

Louise is a third-generation mountaineer who follows literally in her father’s footsteps. She eclipses her older climbing siblings to sustain the DeMaistre reputation as the first family of French mountaineering guides.

Set in the ancient village of Montier of the Alps, “Caverns” chronicles Louise’s life from birth to motherhood. The novel centers on the 1950s--mountaineering’s golden age--from 14-year-old Louise’s first rescue mission near home, to triumph, and romance, at the roof of the world in Tibet.

Author Roper lives up to his surname as he incorporates his firsthand knowledge of mountain climbing in this fictional biography. A Sierra Club Book imprint, “Caverns” takes its nature-education task seriously, and includes a glossary of mountaineering nomenclature for “flatlanders.”

If you have a mall-bound daughter, “In Caverns of Blue Ice” could be the needed encouragement to get her outdoors--and maybe even into the challenges of climbing nature’s cathedrals. A publishing aphorism states that the quintessential young adult adventure book features a male protagonist, but Roper dispatches this dictum with skill in the book.

LONG TIME PASSING by Adrienne Jones (A Charlotte Zolotow Book/HarperCollins: $14.95; 244 pp.).

Recall the summer when draft cards and bras burn with equal ire; the summer when Reagan is governor, Armstrong hops on the Sea of Tranquility and Jimi plays Woodstock. Adrienne Jones has captured the societal upheaval of that particular summer in her 16th novel, “Long Time Passing.”

The novel is a reminiscence of Jonah Duncan’s 17th summer. Following the death of his mother, Jonah’s Vietnam-bound Marine lieutenant colonel father ships him off to the care of his maiden Aunt Hester. The rebellious Jonah promptly seeks out and befriends every Mendocino undesirable Aunt Hester warns him against. In fewer than two months he builds an unofficial lighthouse with a one-armed sea captain. He saves a logger and child from drowning. He runs away with a flower-power protest singer to join a commune in Berkeley, and enlists in the Marines when his father goes MIA.

Jones creates internal tension on every page. Her finely drawn, quirky small-town characters would feel at ease on Cannery Row. She supplies them with conflicts galore--and adroitly ties up all the loose threads by book’s end.

ASK ME SOMETHING EASY by Natalie Honeycutt (A Richard Jackson Book/Orchard Books: $13.95; 188 pp. ).

“Ask Me Something Easy” graphs the despair of a family in disintegration as experienced by four sisters.

Firstborn Dinah sides with her mother, becoming laundress, cook, babysitter, straight-A super-student--and a royal snitch. The younger twins create imaginary alter-egos in the personas of their rag dolls. The twins are always good girls--but through the toys tell of another reality. In time, the dolls become eerie ventriloquist dummies--and the twins mute.

The manic depressive mother’s personal grooming and housekeeping chores are neglected. Mother’s rage--and subsequent physical and mental abuses--are directed solely at Addie, the second-born daughter, who asks the wrong questions and is Daddy’s unspoken favorite.

Mother’s off-page battles with her ex, and paranoid scenario of kidnap, prompt drastic measures. Addie is cloistered in her grandparents’ desert home for the summer, under virtual house arrest. If you think wicked witches are just characters from our pre-politically correct era, then wait till you meet the mother in “Ask Me Something Easy.” She embodies the rationale for foster homes.

A sad novel of childhood, “Ask Me Something Easy” gives insight to the abandonment, impotence and the psychological damage of divorce.