Gary Paulsen: Adventurer and Author is part of the Spotlight Biography ebook series for young readers. This collection of previously published, well-reviewed biographies will grow over the next two years. Next in line is Judith Josephson’s award-winning biography on Jesse Owens. Download Gary Paulsen free on Tuesday, September 10. Download Barbara McClintock: Nobel Prize Geneticist free on Thursday, September 12.
Gary Paulsen is a writing machine, his books magnets for young readers, especially boys. His work has been translated into fifteen languages, and more than 15 million copies of his books—200+ titles—are in print. He’s used more lives than a cat—during the Itidarod sled race, on a motorcycle journey, in storms at sea, and at a Minnesota lake where he fell twelve feet through thin ice, rescued by his beloved lead dog Cookie, all fodder for his writing.
Most remarkable is Paulsen’s ability to set different tones. From books like his rollicking Harris and Me, Liar Liar, Flat Broke, Crush, and Lawn Boy, to the phenomenally popular Newbery Honor Book Hatchet, from the searching Canyons to the poetic A Christmas Sonata, Paulsen’s books fly off the shelves.
Paulsen’s own childhood was rough. “My parents were drunks,” he says bluntly of his itinerant upbringing. As a teen steeped in loneliness, he escaped to the woods and rivers of northern Minnesota, calling it “a kind of self-fostering.” Paulsen is best known for his Newbery Honor survival story Hatchet.
Paulsen Does Research
Nancy Johnson’s poignant eFrog Press blog post about writing her book My Brother’s Keeper brought to mind Gary Paulsen’s similar Civil War era research. Their focus on making history come to life for young people struck a particular chord as the nation notes the sesquicentennial of the battle that raged at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Paulsen’s Civil War-based research resulted in Soldier’s Heart, which frames the Civil War through the eyes of Charley Goddard, an underage soldier who enlists in the First Minnesota Volunteers.
