The Deerslayer by JF Cooper. i read it in translation when i was like 10, and i liked it.

hooo boy, as an adult. hooooooo boy. i can definitely see why it's not popular kid's literature in the US. you have to be able to put up with absurdly convoluted sentences like

Had there been a temple reared to god, in that solitary wilderness, its clock would have told the hour of midnight as the party set forth on their expedition.

and that's the narrator. the characters are written in what is presumably an attempt to represent their accent, so "certain" is "sartain", "point" is "p'int", etc.

also the book cant go one page without a white character calling a native american "savage" and dreaming about murdering their children. i mean, it's probably an accurate portrayal of whites in the 1700s NY frontier, but uh.