I'm almost done listening to Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky on my ipod. What a fabulous book -- I read this in my youth and it's great for one in their early teens.
The book was written in 1955 and it's age shows as part of it's charm. Everyone is witty in the 50's sense of the term, very intelligent, and very, very independent.
The gist of the story is that humanity has created "gateways" that open up the galaxy to humanity's burgeoning population for colonization. Rod Walker is part of a high school course on "colonial studies" or survival skills. His final exam is to be dropped on an uncolonized planet for a week or two and survive... the problem is that the return call never comes.
You follow Rod as he searches out the remnants of his classmates as they build a new society on their unknown world. Great stuff. The best part of this book is how people far in the future survive with hunting and camping skills right out of the wild west.
http://www.amazon.com/Tunnel-Sky-Robert-Heinlein/dp/1416505512/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200082407&sr=8-1
