Use great caution. Here's why: "At various times a teacher, field engineer, soldier, actor, director, farmer, rancher, truck driver, trapper, professional archer, migrant farm worker, singer and sailor.." Gary Paulsen is a multiple award-winning writer of youth (and adult) books. He is wildly popular, obviously talented and extremely prolific. He cannot be ignored; and yet, neither of the two most useful Christian book resources (Honey for a Child's Heart and Books Children Love) mention his work at all. Many of the themes and some of the language in Paulsen's books are just not appropriate for the twelve and under crowd. So, Gary Paulsen earns our first YELLOW FLAG AUTHOR designation, given to those writers whose work is outstanding in some respects, but parents should use great caution in guiding their children's selections. (His Newbery winner-Hatchet- is very popular among boys.)
Most recently, I read The Night the White Deer Died. The story line is so improbable at so many points, that Publishers Weekly resorted to calling it "an allegory, rooted in the chasm between actualities and pretensions." I suppose. The book typically includes themes of divorce, alcoholism, and an oblique reference to teen sex. There are a few expletives. And a standard helping of Paulsen's philosophizing-"before she learned that all things beautiful are sometimes ugly and that many ugly things are just waiting for beauty to come to them." This one is PG.
1 comment:
i'm looking forward to reading Hatchet, and it's sequels with my boys.
it was very formative in my early teen years, the object of many imagination-adventures.
Post a Comment