Gone To The Woods

Gary Paulsen has written his memoirs at the age of eighty, and this is it.  The heart-wrenching story of his childhood, written as a novel.  He refers to himself as "the boy" throughout, choosing to tell it in third person.  If you have read Hatchet, or any of his other works, you understand that he has a love of the natural world.  In this, he explains what triggered that.  I wanted him to stay forever with his aunt and uncle, who were a refuge for him in his tumultuous early years.  He was taken from his neglectful mother and sent to a farm, where he was cared for and loved and safe.  However he did not stay there.  He traveled to the Philipines to find his soldier father and lived in Manila for some time, seeing things a young boy should never see.  His alcoholic parents brought him back to the US where they continued to neglect him and he lived on his own for the most part.  I love the role that the librarian played in his life, and I hope his aunt and uncle lived a long a beautiful life! I found several things in this story a bit too mature for a K-5 library, but this is a PERFECT fit for middle school.  (BIO PAU)