In little over a decade, working mainly out of northern Minnesota, he published nearly forty books and close to articles and stories for magazines. Among Paulsen's diverse titles were a number of children's nonfiction books about animals, a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
On a bet with a friend, he once wrote eleven articles and short stories inside four days and sold all of them. To burn off tension, he took long walks around his Minnesota farm during which, as he told Serdahely, he would "blow the hell out of a hillside" with a rifle.
His prolific output was interrupted by a libel lawsuit brought against his young adult novel Winterkill. Paulsen eventually won the case, but, as he once observed, "the whole situation was so nasty and ugly that I stopped writing.
I wanted nothing more to do with publishing and burned my bridges, so to speak. It's not pleasant, but it's humane, if death can be humane. I was working a mile line mostly on foot, sometimes on skis, going out in the early morning and heading home at night.
Very slow work. To help Paulsen in his hunting job, a friend gave him a team of sled dogs, a gift which ultimately had a profound influence on Paulsen. There was no one around, and all I could hear was the rhythm of the dogs' breathing as they pulled the sled.
For food, we had a few beaver carcasses. I was initiated into this incredibly ancient and very beautiful bond, and it was as if everything that had happened to me before ceased to exist.
He went so far as to enter the grueling mile Iditarod race in Alaska, an experience which later provided the basis for his award-winning novel Dogsong. Paulsen's acclaimed young adult fiction--all written since the s--often centers around teenage characters who arrive at an understanding of themselves and their world through pivotal experiences in nature.
His writing has been praised for its almost poetic effect, and he is also credited for creating vivid descriptions of his characters' emotional states. His novel Tracker tells about a thirteen-year-old boy who faces his first season of deer hunting alone as his grandfather lies dying of cancer. Ronald A. Jobe in Language Arts praised the novel as "powerfully written," adding that " Paulsen explores with the reader the inner-most frustrations, hurts, and fears of the young boy.
It's a relationship with its own integrity, not to be violated. At a certain point, the animal senses death coming and accepts it. This acceptance of death is something I was trying to write about in Tracker. Tracker was the first of several of Paulsen's books to receive wide critical and popular recognition. Dogsong, a Newbery Medal Honor book, is a rite-of-passage novel about a young Eskimo boy, Russel, who wishes to abandon the increasingly modern ways of his people.
Through the guidance of a tribal elder, Russel learns to bow-hunt and dogsled, and eventually leads his own pack of dogs on a trip across Alaska and back. Like Russel in Dogsong, Brian is also transformed by the wilderness. Instead of the main character reaching maturity while struggling in the wilderness, in Harris the unnamed protagonist discovers a sense of belonging while spending a summer on his relatives' farm.
A child of abusive and alcoholic parents, the young narrator is sent to live with another set of relations--his uncle's family--and there he meets the reckless Harris, who leads him in escapades involving playing Tarzan in the loft of the barn and using pig pens as the stage for G.
Joe games. Recreating his own childhood experience, Paulsen tells a tale of a young boy sent to his grandmother, a voyage of salvation for the youthful protagonist. In the first title, the boy comes from Chicago to the woods of Minnesota where his grandmother is working as a cook for road builders. In Alida's Song, the nameless protagonist is now fourteen and sliding into trouble until he again spends a summer with his grandmother on the farm where she now cooks for two elderly brothers.
Escaping the alcoholism at home, he finds love and renewal in the simple surroundings and in nature. A Publishers Weekly critic described the book as "Paulsen's classic blend of emotion and ruggedness, as satisfying as ever.
Looking at life as a literal gem, he can turn said gem, gazing at a new facet, a new angle of approach for old stories, mining and re-mining his own lode of stories endlessly.
In another critically successful book, Paulsen examines the horrors and brutality of slavery. The historically based Nightjohn is set in the nineteenth-century South and revolves around Sarny, a young slave girl who risks severe punishment when she is persuaded to learn to read by Nightjohn, a runaway slave who has just been recaptured.
When the eager young student is caught tracing letters in the ground, her vicious master beats her, then vents his anger on Sarny's adopted "mammy," humiliating her by tying her naked to his buggy and whipping her as he forces her to pull him and the vehicle. When Nightjohn confesses that he has been Sarny's teacher, the slave endures his punishment: two of his toes are sliced off.
A commentator for Kirkus Reviews called Nightjohn "a searing picture of slavery" and an "unbearably vivid book. A focal point of her story is the fact that she learned to read: this saved her on more than one occasion. Paulsen prefers to write for adolescents because, as he once observed, " it's artistically fruitless to write for adults. Adults created the mess which we are struggling to outlive.
Adults have their minds set. Art reaches out for newness, and adults aren't new. And adults aren't truthful. Sentries particularly speaks to the threat of nuclear war and, as Paulsen once commented, contains "mostly a lot of questions, and I'm betting that young people have the answers. The White Fox Chronicles is a departure for Paulsen in its futuristic setting and a plot that a Publishers Weekly reviewer likened to that of a "shoot-'em-up computer game. Despite it book's reliance on "pure B-movie" dialogue and plotting, the reviewer noted that it would cause readers to "cheer on the good guys without ever fearing that they might not triumph in the end.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer found The Beet Fields full of "punishingly harsh stuff" and a "mannered prose style," but added that "no one can fail to appreciate the author's transcendence of the appalling circumstances he describes. It is exactly this ability to transcend time and space and speak directly to his readers that has made Paulsen such a popular and respected author.
In awarding the writer the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the award committee, as noted in School Library Journal, commented on this very trait: "With his intense love of the outdoors and crazy courage born of adversity, Paulsen reached young adults everywhere. Interesting Gary Paulsen Facts: Gary Paulsen grew up in relative poverty due to his parent's alcoholism.
Gary Paulsen graduated from high school in with only a D- average. When Gary Paulsen decided to write he took a job as a proofreader and wrote in his free time at night. Gary Paulsen eventually decided that to write he needed to move to a remote cabin. He lived in a cabin in northern Minnesota. Gary Paulsen's series Brian's Saga began being published in with Hatchet. Gary Paulsen's series the Mr. Tucket Saga includes Mr.
Many of Gary Paulsen's books are coming of age stories with the wilderness as their settings. Gary Paulsen didn't have much recognition or success as a writer until he wrote about his experiences in the Iditarod. Gary Paulsen has competed in the famous Iditarod Alaskan sled dog race on two occasions.
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