Paulsen, whose works include Hatchet (MacMillan, 1986), Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod (Harcourt, 1994), and Woodsong (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 1990), and whose accolades include three Newberry Medals, is beloved by generations of young readers. And yet I’m torn: Maybe I loved Paulsen because he represented something that was forbidden to me, because his work represented “masculine” writing, with all its supposed weight and seriousness, those markers of quality that my girlish books-I was told-had not. I’m grateful to the writer who introduced me to the rough music of the woods, and to writing in a different way, making style stand out. His one-word sentences, his hard-hitting and minimalist writing, still stud my memory. The true-to-life pain and fear Paulsen depicted were my first introduction to the brutal honesty a story could contain. I cherish the books of Gary Paulsen in a different way than the fantasy stories that took me on comforting journeys to fairy tale worlds. Boys learning to build a fire and gut a ruffed grouse. Sled dogs running through the night, their toes freezing in an Alaskan winter. Next to those books stand Paulsen’s, about wolves tearing open the guts of a deer on a frozen lake.
There are unicorn novels and tales of talking mice fighting fantasy wars, along with the many books about teen wizards.
The Gary Paulsen books are in a box in my basement now, yellowing the way all paperbacks do, tucked among the pantheon of the most beloved, the most favorite middle-grade reading experiences I’ve ever had.
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