Gary Paulsen spoke at the Harold Washington library yesterday. My friend, Donna, attended and said he was amazing and kind. He grabbed her hand when she told him that she used to teach in the some of the most remote parts of Alaska. The best line in the article is when Gary says, “I am alive because of libraries.”
October 20, 2007–Chicago Tribune
Gary Paulsen, author of scores of books, has captured the attention of young people, particularly those drawn to his depictions of the natural world and triumph in the face of adversity. On Oct. 27, Paulsen will receive the 2007 Chicago Tribune Young Adult Book Prize at the Harold Washington Library Center. Past winners have included Blue Balliett, Lois Lowry, Richard Peck and Kate DiCamillo. These authors share an extraordinary ability to connect with young readers with gripping, powerful stories. Paulsen, 68, a veteran of Alaska’s Iditarod dog-sled race and a rough childhood in northern Minnesota, certainly knows something about endurance.
In advance of his visit, Paulsen, who is married and lives part of the year alone in the remote Alaskan bush, spoke by telephone with Tribune literary editor Elizabeth Taylor. Over the din of barking dogs, Paulsen reflected on the importance of books in his own childhood and how that transformed into his passion for writing:
Q I’m sure Chicago will seem really noisy when you arrive — your life sounds so peaceful.
A It is, except that here when we’re training now with the dogs, at 5 in the morning we start harnessing and they go insane because they want to run so much. There is a din, just a different kind.
Q And you will be met by a different sort of din — of enthusiastic young fans — when you appear at the wonderful Chicago Public Library.
A I am alive because of libraries. I think I would have been in prison. I mean, I had a terrible childhood. My folks were drunks and, this is all cliche, I suppose, but I was a street kid in a small town in northern Minnesota. I was walking around and went into a library one night to get warm.
I would wait around until the drunks got juiced in the bars and I could sweep their change off the bars and they wouldn’t see. I lived on the street. I also set pins in a bowling alley, and this librarian kind of took me under her wing.
And she just started me reading. I was a poor reader and a miserable student. She gave me a library card, which was the first kind of thing I ever had. It had my name on it, and I was so impressed. I actually had an identity.
I was one of those kids that was an outcast. The cliche now is that those kids fall through the cracks. I didn’t really have any friends. I was not social in my childhood. Never had a girlfriend, a date, I didn’t go out for sports. I orphaned myself to the woods, really. There were forests right around that town, and I would just stay in the woods and hunt and trap and fish. And read. She got me to reading. . . .
Later, it became my mainstay to read. It still is. I read myself to sleep every night. I carry books with me to the woods when I’m training dogs. I’ll carry a paperback on the training runs when I’m out with the dogs.
Q What do you read?
A Now I’m doing a lot of research, so there is a lot of non-fiction. I am actually reading about prizefighting in Victorian England. You know how some “very not nice people” fight dogs now? They used to fight men that way — they would just let two men fight until one dropped. Maybe 100 rounds. Children were involved.
Anyway, I am doing research now on that whole era when they used children for this in England — very much like slaves, as a matter of fact. When cotton was king, they would sweep the streets of London, gather children and put them in the cotton mills on the looms. I want to do a book about a kid who lived in that era in London.
Q One of your books was dedicated to 13-year-old-boys, and many of your books speak to those boys. Are they more vulnerable today than they were in the past?
A One of the things I find particularly galling is sports. I don’t like the way sports are done. I think sports has become a religion to people — it is way past common sense.
Q You must hear from a lot of young people.
A I get 200 to 400 letters a day — fan letters — and I really focus on the ones from kids who may be in trouble or in danger. I may even call the school if I feel really concerned.
Kids often write to me about such things because I’ve never kept my childhood a secret. They feel I can relate to that — a lot of boys will write about how they want to be good at sports, but can’t be — and that they’d like to be sports heroes or whatever. They will try to pay me, at times, for autographs because most of the sports figures charge for such things. That is horrible, just ridiculous.
Q What role did the natural world play in your reinvention?
A I mean, nature saved me. My childhood was abysmal. I couldn’t ever go home so I threw myself to the woods . . . and at times in my life when things have been bad financially, or divorcewise, or emotionally. People can relate to the idea that nature can kind of do the same for them, that they can reinvent themselves through natural living.
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He was amazing. Extremely witty and thoughtful at the same time. I think he is wise in a way we don’t generally consider to be wisdom. I know for many of my students his books were ones they could finally relate to and that sparked their interest in literature. What an wonderful author. He definitely deserved the prize.
Shame on Gary Paulsen for hyping the Iditarod.
The race is terribly cruel to dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org .
Here’s a short list of what happens to the dogs during the Iditarod: death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.
At least 133 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race’s early years.
Causes of death have included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. “Sudden death” and “external myopathy,” a fatal condition in which a dog’s muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson’s dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.
In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.
No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.
On average, 53 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:
“They’ve had the hell beaten out of them.” “You don’t just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.’ They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying.” -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno’s column
Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, “I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that “‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.’” “Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective…A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective.” “It is a common training device in use among dog mushers…A whip is a very humane training tool.”
During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.
Mushers believe in “culling” or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. “On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don’t pull are dragged to death in harnesses…..” wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska’s Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).
Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 column in USA Today, “He [Colonel Tom Classen] confirmed dog beatings and far worse. Like starving dogs to maintain their most advantageous racing weight. Skinning them to make mittens. Or dragging them to their death.”
The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.
Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn’t anything like the Iditarod.
The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals’ best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.
Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse.
Wow…such strong opinions on iditarod dogs!
I found the facts presented in the above comment to be misleading if not indeed inaccurate. The Iditarod has made tremendous strides in the care of its dogs. Its guidelines for dogcare are strict. While citing an incident that occured in 1976 may serve to support your case it does not reflect on the current practices, not the practices over the recently passed decades, of the Iditarod. Yes, Rick Swenson was withdrawn from the race in 1996 due to a dog death. That was the year when, in an attempt to prove that the Iditarod was doing all it could to insure dog safety, the rules were changed so that ANY dog death was cause for being withdrawn from the race. This was true even when it was caused by natural causes. The fact that he was withdrawn from the race in no way reflects on his dog care. In fact, in 1996, Rick Swenson was awarded the most inspirational musher award by his fellow racers. This is because his fellow mushers realized that Rick is one of the tops in terms of dog care and had been withdrawn for an incident that was no fault of his own.
It is also true that many of the dogs that start the Iditarod do not finish. This is intentional. Teams may start with up to 16 dogs. Mushers intentionally bring more dogs than they intend to end with. This allows them to drop dogs that may be injured or tired before a problem occurs. If they notice a dog is appearing tired they will drop it in a village (where it is cared for by qualified persons until it is able to be flown to Anchorage to be taken home). This is done to protect the dog from becoming injured. It is also impractical to finish the race with so many dogs. Therefore it is not a surprise that so many dogs do not finish the race.
The dogs receive a thorough examination before the race begins and throughout the race. Any musher will tell you that the dogs are cared for first and foremost. Meticulous records are kept regarding the health of all dogs. If a dogs health is in question they are not allowed to continue.
The sad truth is that these dogs receive better health care than most people in our own country.
I could go on an on about all the Iditarod has done for dog care and all that has been learned about dogs because of the Iditarod but, due to space limitations, I will refrain.
I applaud Gary Paulsen for his love of dogs and wish him success as he races this year.
Thank you, Akgal, for your response!
I heard Gary Paulsen speak and thought is message was pure and thought provoking. I like Akgal’s comparison to how some of the dogs are treated better than the health care many people receive.
Interesting discussion!
I was also in the audience to listen to Gary Paulsen speak and was moved by his completely open and thoughtful presentation. Too much emphasis is being placed here on the Iditarod when it should be placed on the man and the author Gary Paulsen himself. Paulsen’s recognition has been long overdue and is well deserved. Speaking as a school librarian, I can attest to the fact that his books have engaged and enlightened many reluctant readers. Very often, students would come back to read every book we had by him. Isn’t that what we are striving for…developing a love of reading in young people? Paulsen clearly writes from the heart and students, as well as adults, are enjoying his books without exception and for me that is a goal well worth achieving.
I agree that he deserves the recognition. As a teacher in the remote bush of Alaska his stories were the ones that grabbed my students and got them interested in reading. I remember the year when my class made me read EVERY book in the Brian series and then made me follow it with Guts. They were thrilled that finally someone wrote about something they could relate to. The beauty of his books are that they speak to so many students - no matter where they are. I currently teach 5th grade and his books have a vice-grip on my class. Students in my small reading group are begging to take Brian’s Winter home to finish it (we read a small amount each day) and my homeroom class had me abandon the Jerry Spinelli book we were reading so we could read Hatchet instead. I think authors like that are rare and was so glad to see him get the recognition he deserved.
You’ve motivated me to read more Gary Paulsen. Many of his books have failed to reel me in right away!
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