Though he was admittedly not a dedicated student, Paulsen managed to graduate high school in Thief River Falls, Minn., and began attending Bemidji College in 1958. When he was 14, he ran away to travel with a carnival. Paulsen’s teenage years were tumultuous and when things were particularly rough at home, he escaped by running away to the woods where he hunted and trapped animals to survive. It was though I had been dying of thirst and the librarian had handed me a five-gallon bucket of water.

I roared through everything she gave me, and in the summer read a book a day. She recommended westerns and science fiction, but every now and then would slip in a classic. I can’t even describe how liberating it was. When she handed me the card, she handed me the world. “To my absolute astonishment the librarian walked up to me and asked if I wanted a library card. He walked past the local public library “in 20-below temperatures” one evening and ventured inside to get warm. At age 13, he told SATA, Paulsen had a chance encounter that awakened his passion for reading. Upon returning to the U.S., Paulsen was a self-described shy “Army brat” moving to a new place-and new school-every few months, finding it hugely difficult to make friends. In an interview for Something About the Author, Gary Paulsen recalled an early childhood “reared by my grandmother and several aunts” while his father was “fighting the Germans” and his mother worked in a munitions plant in Chicago during the war doing “Rosie the Riveter type stuff.” Paulsen was seven years old when he first saw his father in the Philippines, where the family was stationed from 1946–49. His father was a career military man who served as an officer under General Patton during World War II. Paulsen was born in Minneapolis to Oscar and Eunice Paulsen.

Award-winning and prolific author Gary Paulsen, best known for his novels and nonfiction for young people about self-reliance and the transformative, awesome power of the wilderness, died suddenly on October 13 in New Mexico.

Road Trip by Gary Paulsen