Judy Angelo

Final Project

12/17/02

I chose to examine the life and works of author Gary Paulsen. I have tried to identify events in his life that have influenced his choice of themes., and I have compiled books and websites that are helpful in the study of this author.

It is likely that no oneís life was ever changed by a trip to the library as much as that of author Gary Paulsen. Born to dysfunctional, alcoholic parents Paulsen was a poor student with no direction in life, when, in 1953 he stepped into a public library to get warm. The librarian convinced him to apply for a library card and check out a book. Paulsen later says of this experience,

"The only reason that I am here and not in prison is because of that woman. I was a loser, but she showed me the power of reading, that I didnít need to qualify with the right clothes. Everything that I am I owe to that woman."(Something About the Author, p. 162). This experience influenced Paulsen so much that he never missed an opportunity in his later life to praise libraries and librarians.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 17^th, 1939, Gary was to be the only child of Eunice and Oscar Paulsen. At the time of his sonís birth, Oscar war serving under General Patton in Europe as World war II was beginning. Eunice took young Gary to Chicago where she found employment in an ammunition factory. Her son was left in the care of a woman who apparently spent more time drinking wine than interacting with her young charge. In an autobiographical book for adults entitled Eastern Sun, Winter Moon Paulsen writes candidly of his motherís drinking and affairs with men when he was just a toddler. Eunice Paulsen was young, beautiful and lonely with her husband away. . Paulsen writes of a loving, though distracted and rather selfish mother who actually had an "uncle" move into her room in Chicago. Most of the memories of this time period were bittersweet, with sadness mixed with warmth. Among his early memories was taking a train to visit his young cousin Raleigh, who was dying. This experience was later the basis for the wonderful novella A Christmas Sonata. A positive experience during his preschool years occurred when he spent a summer visiting his grandmother Alida, who worked as a cook for a road crew in Northern Minnesota. Paulsen, as always, turned these memories of this summer into a book, entitled The Cookcamp.

A dramatic change occurred for young Gary in 1945. As WWII drew to a close, Oscar was transferred to the Philippines. This time his family was able to join him after a long voyage across the Pacific. Paulsen remembers this time period as one in which his mother became more distant. Gary was left in the care of his Filipino housekeeper and houseboy, while his mother partied and drank with officersí wives. Although reunited with his father, that man remained a distant, unapproachable figure for nearly all of Garyís life. Oscar worked long hours and like Eunice, drank heavily. One of the few good memories of his 3 year stay in the islands was of a gift he received from his mother: his first dog.

Upon returning to the United states in 1948, Eunice and Oscar embarked on a lifestyle that included extramarital affairs and a great deal of drinking with little concern for their son. The rest of Garyís childhood was marked by poverty and neglect. Painfully shy and feeling as though he never quite fit in, Gary hated school and was an indifferent student. He spent days and even weeks at a time in the woods, much like the characters in the Brian novels and in The Island. He learned to fish, hunt and trap, and supplemented his diet with his catches. His home life was so terrible that he was occasionally rescued by members of the extended family. He uses these experiences for a basis for the humorous Harris and Me, and for his 1989 novel Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights. With his parents unable or unwilling to care for him, Gary spent a summer living with his aunt, uncle and cousins on a remote farm in Northern Minnesota. His uncles provided the positive role models that his father could not. Chronically short of money, sixteen year old Gary decided to get a job as an agricultural worker on beet farm, an experience he later recounts in the book My Sixteenth Summer in the Beet Fields. He found the work to be monotonous and backbreaking, and soon ran off with a carnival. He spent the rest of the summer with the carnival folk, running rides and listening to their stories. One of his earliest novels Tiltawhirl John had its genesis in this time period.

In 1957 Gary graduated from high school with very poor grades, but he miraculously was accepted into Bemidji State Teachers College as pre-engineering major. His college career was brief, however, and in 1959 he joined the Army. He also got married that year and was soon the father of two children. Discharged in 1962, he tried to find a job that tied in somewhat with his fledgling engineering skills. Eventually he was hired as a satellite tracker, a job that bored him. Realizing that their hasty marriage was a mistake, he and his wife divorced. She had custody of the two children, who were later adopted by their stepfather. In several other sources, it is stated that Paulsen had another brief, unhappy marriage, but I could not determine whom or when he married. In all of his fiction and non-fiction writings Paulsen says nothing else about these marriages, which is a bit surprising given his candor about his parents. Perhaps it is a painful time which he does not want to relive, or more likely he wishes to spare the feelings of these estranged spouses and children. Eastern Sun, Winter Moon was written after the death of his parents.

With the dissolution of his marriage, working at a job he detested, Paulsen tried to find a new direction for his life. He felt that he might enjoy writing as a career and moved to Hollywood to try his hand at writing screenplays. Disillusionment with the Hollywood lifestyle made him homesick for the woods and a simpler existence, and by

1966 he was on his way back to Minnesota where he tried to support himself by writing. He wrote his first novel, Mr. Tucket, and a non-fiction book for adults at this time, but was only marginally successful. Impoverished and feeling like a failure, Paulsen began to drink more heavily. The years from 1967 to 1972 were mostly lost to alcoholism. He was also being pursued by FBI agents who asserted that he had divulged government defense secrets in his non-fiction book. Apparently, as a satellite tracker, Paulsen was privy to information that should not have been disseminated publicly. The only bright spots in this dismal period of his life were his meeting and marriage to artist Ruth Wright in 1969 and the 1971 birth of his son Jim.

By 1972, Paulsen finally decided that he had spent enough time wallowing in self-pity and alcohol. He wanted desperately to stop wasting his life, but his writing career was stalled. He and his small family moved to Colorado, then back to Minnesota. The Paulsens lived in extreme poverty, with no electricity or plumbing in a place with bitterly cold winters. The family only had enough to eat because they had vegetable gardens and Gary used his knowledge of the woods to hunt, fish and trap. Although they survived, it was at the level of bare subsistence. Unable to make enough money as a writer, Gary tried to make a living as a trapper. Unfortunately, the Paulsenís had no motor vehicle, so he had to walk or ski 29 miles a day to check the trap lines. For all of this effort he made less than $2000.00 annually. At 40 years old, he was financially at the lowest point of his life, with little to indicate that any of it would ever improve.

In 1980 an acquaintance took pity on him and gave him an old sled and 4 sled dogs so that it would be easier to check the trap lines in the snow. A short time later Cookie entered his life, and became the lead sled dog. In My Life in Dog Years Paulsen writes lovingly of Cookie, whom he credits with saving his life by pulling him out of a hole in the ice through which he had fallen. The gift of the dog team was a defining moment in Paulsenís life. His income increased and he was introduced to a sport which he immediately loved: dog sledding. When he wasnít engaged in activities to support himself and his family, in the years 1980-1985 Paulsen trained and raced his dogs, twice entering the grueling Iditarod sled race through Alaska. As he had done all of his life, Paulsen savored the wilderness experience. He enjoyed being alone with his dogs, many miles form other humans.

Another turning point came when he met an Eskimo boy in Alaska and was asked by him about the sport of dog racing. Why is this boy asking me about a sport that originated among his ancestors, wondered Paulsen? With this thought the novel Dogsong was bornóthe story of a young Eskimo boy who wanted to learn the old traditional ways that his people used before the advent of snowmobiles and other inventions made them dependent on technology rather than on their own resources. Dogsong was his first really well received book, earning him a Newbury Honor Book Award, and a renewed interest in writing.

In 1987, a year after Dogsong, Paulsen published what was to be the best selling book of his writing careeróHatchet. Drawing upon his many years of experience in the woods as a trapper, hunter and fisherman, as well as his brief time as a student pilot, Paulsen came up with the idea of a boy from a troubled family (something with which he had much experience), who is the only survivor of a plane crash in a remote wooded area. The boy, named Brian must endure great discomfort and danger, while using all of his senses to survive in the wilderness. Hatchet, also a Newbury Honor Book was a great success, especially among preteens and young teenagers. It was quickly followed by his third Newbury Honor Book, The Winter Room. Suddenly the life of the Paulsen family takes a radical change. At the age of 48, Gary Paulsen had some financial comfort. The success was bittersweet, however, because Paulsen was diagnosed with heart disease and his beloved dog Cookie died. Recalling the farmers that he treated for heart attacks as

in his years as a volunteer medic, Paulsen vowed that he will not be one of them. He realized that he must give up dog racing if he wanted to prolong his life, and saw no reason to be living in a cold environment without the joy of dog sledding. In 1991 The River, his sequel to Hatchet was published and the family moved to New Mexico.

With more free time than ever, Paulsen began to write at a frenetic pace. He wrote two more "Brian" books"óBrianís Winter in 1996, and the conclusion to the Brian stories, Brianís Return, published in 1999. He reached back to very early childhood memories to create the lovely A Christmas Sonata in 1992 and Alidaís Song in 1999. He was inspired by the New Mexican landscape and by his Spanish speaking neighbors to write many books in the 1990s. Some of these are Tucket's Ride in 1997, Tortilla Factory and the Spanish La Tortelleria in 1995, and Sisters = Hermanas in 1993, one of the few books with female protagonists. He researched the Underground Railroad for his 1993 historical novel, Nightjohn, a story of an escaped slave who returns to teach other slaves to read and write. Another departure from his "outdoor" books was his 1995 novella The Tent. At first glance, this story is not autobiographical; the father and son in The Tent buy a big circus tent and travel the countryside as itinerant preachers, even though neither one is religious. This rather depressing story about two con artists has an uplifting ending. I do see a few parallels to Paulsenís life, however. Like the father and son in The Tent, Paulsen led an impoverished life for many years, but also managed to scrape by somehow.

In 1994 Paulsen bought on old sailboat in California which he restored to a seaworthy condition and lived on from time to time. He had been sailing intermittedly since the 1960ís and at one time had even tried to sail from California to Hawaii in a very small (22 ft.) boat. Caught in a vicious storm, Paulsen considered himself lucky to survive. As usual, he incorporated this experience into his writings. In 1989 The Voyage of the Frog was published. This was the first of Paulsenís books that I had read, and I was immediately hooked on his survival novels.

The Voyage of the Frog opens at a sad time in 14 year old Davidís life. His favorite uncle Owen has died of cancer, but willed his small sailboat The Frog to this nephew. Beset by grief, David takes the boat out on the calm Pacific at night, to reminisce about all of the wonderful times the two spent on the boat. David has not informed anyone of his plans, and an unexpected storm damages the boat and blows it off course. Communications are knocked out and this young teen must figure out how to stay alive and be rescued. This book made me think about how I would try to survive if I were in such a situation. Would I be as resourceful as this character? Paulsenís ill-fated Hawaii trip was not the last of his sailing adventures. In the year 2000 he was again sailing in the Pacific while using a laptop to compose his book Eastern Sun, Winter Moon. A year later he wrote another non-fiction book aimed at adult audiences called Caught by the Sea. His fascination with sea adventures can probably be traced to two events. One of the first books that he read when he discovered the public library in 1953 was Herman Melvilleís Moby Dick, a classic story of man against Nature with a nautical setting. The other event occurred when he was just 4 years old, when he was crossing the Pacific with his mother to the Philippines. During that voyage an airplane crashed close to the ship. In both Eastern Sun, Winter Moon and Caught by the Sea Paulsen repeats the gruesome spectacle of sharks attacking those who were lucky enough to survive the plane crash. I think that one of the reasons that Paulsen is so prolific is that he often uses stories from his life in more than one book without much variation in detail.

I think that a few more books merit some discussion. The Paulsens own a ranch in the Western United States, and the beauty of this area was the impetus for the book The Haymeadow, a story about a boy who becomes involved with herding sheep in the mountains of Wyoming. Another book that really touched me was Soldierís Heart: A Novel of the Civil War. A young teen becomes part of the Union forces during the Civil War, only to be disillusioned with the cruelty, brutality and futility of war. Paulsenís book is so vehemently anti-war that he reminded me of the classic World War I anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

Paulsen still expresses wonder when he receives awards like the ALAís Margaret A Edwards for excellence in teen literature. Even after authoring 200 books, he has trouble envisioning himself as a true academic, since he barely graduated from high school and spent more that half his life living close to poverty.

Paulsenís books, especially those dealing with adventure and outdoor experiences have proved to be very popular, especially to boys. The suggested audience for many of these books is the age range of 10-14, a time when preteens and young teens are separating from their parents and ready to test themselves. When children are about 10 years old, most parents feel secure allowing their kids to stay home for brief periods of time without an adult present. By the time kids are 13 or 14 they are often ready to take on the responsibility of babysitting younger children. Depending on the locale, at this age, an average child is old enough to hang out with friends after school or to ride his or her bicycle for an hour or so without the constant watchfulness that parents provide for younger children. So, it is natural that a child of this age will want to explore some of the world, however limited, on his own. This is what Gary Paulsenís characters do, albeit to a greater degree than most urban and suburban kids.

One thing that makes Paulsenís books so appealing is the believability of the characters. The protagonists are not perfect kids who know what to do in every situation. This is why the character Will in The Island strikes a chord with readers. He has the complex emotions of a boy that age, including love for his parents, yet irritability with them at times, the stirrings of romantic interest in a girl, but ineptitude in social situations. Above all, Will possesses appreciation and wonder for living things. Through Paulsenís words, we feel that we know this boy personally.

The action/adventure books of this author are popular because they take us, the readers out of our boring existence and into exciting life and death situations. As we read Hatchet we cannot help but wonder what we would do in a similar situation. Would we be able to figure out how to make a fire? Could we withstand the pain of the porcupine quills or the insects? As we consciously or unconsciously ask these questions we are drawn into the story and feel as though it is happening to us. It is indeed difficult to put down a book when we are captured by the emotions of survival. In reading The Voyage of the Frog we can experience the fear and despair of David as he realizes that he is alone in the Pacific. As quickly as the reader can think of solutions, Paulsen closes off those escape routes. You think that David will be able to call someone on the radio, but alas, the radio is broken. You think that perhaps someone will look for him, but Paulsen reminds the reader that David has not told anyone that he would be out in the sailboat. David does have a little bit of food and water, so the author has given him a time limit to save himself. Like many of Paulsenís adventure books, this is a truly believable story that makes us all question our ability to survive harrowing experiences.

In the book Literature for Young Adults, the author discusses how Paulsenís "terse, staccato rhythms enhance the atmosphere and mood"(Donelson, 139) in Hatchet.

This passage from the book was cited:

He tried to move, but pain hammered into him and made his breath shorten into gasps and he stopped, his legs still in the water.

Pain

Memory

He turned again and the sun came across the water, late sun, cut into his eyes and made him turn away.

It was over then. The crash.

He was alive (Hatchet 33)

This type of writing is almost like poetry. It is very spare, and to the point. We can almost imagine Brian, somewhat in shock as he pieces together what has happened to him. The plane crash is an event that would cause this curt, concise type of thought. Whereas the thoughts of Will in The Island are often rambling and reflective, the thoughts of Brian after the crash in Hatchet are ones of a person coming to the realization that he is still alive.

Paulsen knows what it feels like to be an outsider, and until the age of 14, was not much of a reader. He consciously tries to reach kids who, like him, were aimless and ignored. He told School Library Journal in 1997 that he often gives talks in school libraries and he stipulates that he wants to include " kids who were like me, who didnít have a shot at it, whose folks were drunks, who lived on the outside of society." ( Gale, p26) He feels trepidation that each generation is become less literate than the last, primarily due to the pervasive influence of television. Part of his mission is to reverse that trend.

Anyone who reads Paulsenís works realize that most of them, to one extent or another, are coming-of-age stories. The character, usually male, changes from a child to

young adult, sometimes as obviously as a caterpillar changes into a butterfly. Sometimes this change comes about through introspection, sometimes through physical trials, or through a combination of both. Almost always, however, it occurs against a wild and beautiful background provided by Mother Nature

Bibliography

An additional bibliography of books for and about Gary Paulsen can be found at

http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/paulsenbib.htm

Buchholz, Rachel. "The write stuff." Boysí Life. December. 1995: 28.

Cox, Ruth. "Young male protagonists." Teacher Librarian. February.

2000:46.

Donelson Kenneth L. and Alleen Pace Nilsen. Literature for Todayís Young Adults.

New York: Longman, 1997.

Engelfried, Steven. "Look back in laughter". School Library Journal. February.

2000: 40.

Gale, David. "The maximum expression of being human". School Library Journal.

June. 1997: 24.

Handy, A.E. "An interview with Gary Paulsen". Book Report. May/June. 1991:

28.

Hill, Christine M. Ten terrific authors for teens. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2000.

Hurst, Carol Otis. "Books that build community." Teaching Pre K-8. October.

1997: 80.

Marcus, Leonard and Judy Blume. Author Talk: Conversations with Judy BlumeÖ (et

al.). New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2000.

Paulsen, Gary. Guts: the true story behind Hatchet and the Brian books. New York.

Delacorte Press, 2000.

Raymond, Allen. "Gary Paulsen: Artist-with-words". Teaching PreK-8.

August/September: 53.

Schmitz, James A. "Gary Paulsen: A writer of his time." Digital Library and Archives: The Alan Review. Fall, 1994.http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/

ALAN/fall94/Schmitz.html.

Something About the Author. Detroit: Gale Press, 1995.

Williams, Karen. "Books with an accent on adventure". Christian Science Monitor.

Webliography: Gary Paulsen

****http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/paulsenbib.htm This website contains an extensive

annotated bibliography of books for and about Gary Paulsen.

About.com: Gary Paulsen

http://childparenting.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.randomhouse.com/features/garypaulsen/

ALA Award: Gary Paulsen

http://www.ala.org/news/archives/old/edwards.html

An AskEric Lesson Plan: Survival Kit

http://askeric.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Health/Safety/SFY0006.html