Children’s/Young Adult Literature:
Winterkill, 1976
The Foxman, 1977
The Night the White Deer Died, 1978
The Spitball Gang, 1980
Dancing Carl, 1983
Popcorn Days, 1983
Tracker, 1984
Dogsong, 1985
Sentries, 1986
The Crossing, 1987
Hatchet, 1987
The Island, 1988
The Winter Room, 1989
The Voyage of the Frog, 1989
Canyons, 1990
The Boy Who Owned the School, 1990
The Cookcamp, 1991
The Monument, 1991
The River, 1991
The Haymeadow, 1992
Harris and Me, 1993
Nightjohn, 1993
Mr. Tucket, 1994
The Tent, 1995
Call Me Francis Tucket, 1995
The Rifle, 1995
Brian’s Winter, 1996
Sarny, 1997
The Schernoff Discoveries, 1997
Amos Binder, Secret Agent, 1997
Soldier’s Heart, 1998
The Transall Saga, 1998
Brian’s Return, 1999
Alida’s Song, 1999
Tucket’s Gold, 1999
The White Fox Chronicles, 2000
Tucket’s Home, 2000
The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer, 2000
The Glass Café, 2003
How Angel Peterson Got His Name, 2003
Short Fiction:
The Madonna Stories, 1989
Nonfiction:
Eastern Sun, Western Moon: An Autobiographical Odyssey, 1993
Father Water, Mother Woods: Essays on Fishing and Hunting in the North Woods, 1994
Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod, 1994
Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers: Reflections on Being Raised by a Pack of Sled Dogs, 1996
Pilgrimage on a Steel Ride: A Memoir About Men and Motorcycles, 1997
Guts, 2001
Caught by the Sea: My Life on Boats, 2001
Gary Paulsen has been one of the most prolific writers of books for young adult readers in the genre’s history. Raised by his mother for the first seven years of his life, he did not meet his father until the family was reunited in the Philippines, where his father was serving in the U.S. Army. Moving from base to base after World War II, sometimes in the care of his grandmother, Paulsen was uninterested in school and frequently in trouble. He began to read when he was offered a library card after he entered a library building to get warm while working a newspaper route. He left home at fourteen to join a carnival and later worked as a ranch hand and a construction worker. At seventeen, he enlisted in the Army, where he learned enough about missiles to became a technician for the Lockheed Martin Corporation upon his discharge. Convinced that his experiences were worth further examination, he left that job to work as a magazine proofreader and began writing at night.
He completed his first novel while living in a cabin in the Minnesota woods, where his experiences with animals and his developing skills for survival in a harsh environment gave him the central subjects of his ensuing work. A fascination with dogs had led him to make two successful runs in the Iditarod sled race; when a heart condition restricted his physical activities, he put “the same energy and effort that I was using with dogs” into writing, sometimes twenty hours a day.
Paulsen was immediately successful, with a number of books that captured the close relationship between a young man and a wild animal, as well as with stories about teenage boys who did not fit easily into any of the roles considered acceptable in society. With Dogsong, however, he moved into the first rank of young-adult authors. This story of an Inuit learning about a hidden heritage while on a trek through forbidding but enchanting terrain brought together Paulsen’s feeling for animals, his thorough knowledge of survival skills, and his ability to write with insight and sensitivity about a unique individual. Paulsen was temporarily sidetracked by a lawsuit brought by a man who wrongly assumed that Winterkill was based on the claimant’s life, but after prevailing in court, Paulsen returned to the same schedule of prolific production. His wife, artist Ruth Wright, began illustrating some of his children’s books.
In addition to his continuing interest in survival situations and his fascination with the dimensions of the natural world–areas that he has also addressed effectively in essays and memoirs–Paulsen has returned to several other themes in evolving narratives that he has developed in multibook sequences. The Monument, about the Vietnam War, and Soldier’s Heart, about the Civil War, are candid, forceful examinations of combat, while The Rifle directly confronts the destructive appeal of weapons in American life. Nightjohn and Sarny powerfully evoke the plague of slavery. In a much lighter mode, he has also written a number of comic novels, such as The Boy Who Owned the School and The Schernoff Discoveries, whose protagonists are still young people living outside the sphere of popularity. Throughout his career, Paulsen has moved from one subject and setting to another, producing books directed to, if not exclusively limited to, a particular cohort. His greatest success has been with younger readers, as indicated by the distinguished Newbery Medals for Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room and numerous designations from the American Library Association, including Best Book for Young Readers for Soldier’s Heart. The distinction, however, between children’s books and those which also interest a mature reader does not strictly apply to Paulsen’s best work.