Gary Paulsen


I didn't expect him to look so normal. In all his pictures, he looks a little "half baked," Suspenders. Beard. Mouth open in laughter.  Here he looked for all the world like a middle aged banker from a small town. Friendly. Normal.

But he certainly didn't talk like a banker. He talked like a writer. A writer who loved what he did, loved stories, loved people, loved dogs, loved the outdoors.  Lawyers he didn't loved. "Why isn't there an open season on lawyers?" he asked.

I was surprised that he had grown up essentially without parents, a street kid. His parents were both drunks, and he was well on his way to being shiftless. He didn't like school, and he never studied. He graduated, in fact, with a D- average. But he loved books thanks to a librarian who offered him a library card and a book one evening when he wandered into a library to get warm. He'd been selling newspapers and needed to warm up before he could go on. The librarian changed his life. He discovered books and stories and writing.

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