Showing results by author "Gary Paulsen" in All Categories

Harold Schernoff, fourteen-year-old science whiz and social outcast, has a theory to solve every problem, from dating to dealing with bullies, to making money, to playing sports, to buying a car when you’re underage. Want to learn to ski? Try: Mass x acceleration x slope of hill = EEEEEAAGGHHH! Here’s another surefire formula: Golf balls + car = BANG!Science turns slapstick when Harold and his buddy team up to test Schernoff’s Discoveries.

Mudshark is cool. He’s the go-to guy with the answers, and the mudshark Detective Agency is always on the case. At least, it is until the Psychic Parrot takes up residence in the school library. The word in school is that the parrot can out- think Mudshark. And right now, the school needs someone who’s good at solving problems. There’s an escaped gerbil running the halls’ a near-nuclear emergency in the faculty restroom, and an unexplained phenomenon involving disappearing erasers. Once Mudshark solves the mystery of the erasers, he plans to investigate the Psychic Parrot….

Today, Molly:Lost her Notebook (her Notebook that contained everything she needed to live. Including her homework), learned her wacky grandma Irene was coming to spend the day at school with her, got a black eye, AND was late to class. And it’s only nine a.m. Could things get any worse? You bet!

Tired of being poor, Steven’s father, Corey, is certain that preaching the Word of the Lord is the way to fame and fortune. So father and son take off in their dilapidated truck, with a stolen Bible and a leaky army tent, for a whirlwind tour of small Texas towns. At first, few people come to see the new tent preacher - but each day Corey’s confidence and charisma grow. Soon their fortune is growing, too, especially when they start performing bogus healings. For the first time, they can afford luxuries like expensive hotel rooms, meals in fancy restaurants, even a slick new bike for Steven.

His uncle wanted him to stay home and work the farm. But the boy knew there was a world out there he had to see. Yet being a runaway meant you were outside the law - fair game. That’s how he got caught on the farm gang. There was no way out, until Tiltawhirl John picked him up and taught him how to be a carnie, how to stay one step ahead of the suckers. But there was one man from the past even T-John couldn’t keep ahead of. How could the kid keep him from destroying his future?

Rosa is an illegal immigrant from Mexico City who sells herself on the streets of Houston while dreaming of a career in modeling. Traci is a blonde beauty obsessed with becoming head cheerleader and securing her future for a good marriage. On the surface, no two 14-year-olds could appear more different. Three-time Newbery Honor-winner Gary Paulsen brings his immense talents to this rich story of a chance encounter between two young women, each seeing her life mirrored in the eyes of another.

For the last few years, 13-year-old Tag Jones has been running the family bait shop on the sandy Bermuda beach. He has been helping earn money ever since his father died in a scuba diving accident while searching for a legendary Spanish shipwreck. Whenever he has free time, he dives with his best friend in the azure water above the hazardous coral reefs.

>In the winter life in McKinley, Minnesota, revolves around the rinks, where kids play hockey and grown-ups skate to scratchy phonograph records. Then, the year Marsh and his best friend, Willy, are 12, Carl appears at the rink, wearing a battered, old leather flight jacket and doing a strange dance that is both beautiful and disturbing to watch. It is Marsh and Willy who discover the terrible secret behind Carl’s dance, a secret that threatens to destroy him. But a small miracle occurs....

Jacob Freisten's goal in life is to be unnoticed. He's perfect at gliding past the jocks' lockers and sneaking into his English class. But he won't be unnoticed now. If he wants to pass English, he has to work on the stage crew of the school production of The Wizard of Oz. Jacob, who's usually in a fog anyway, gets the job of running the fog machine. The problem is that Maria Tresser, the girl of his dreams, is playing the Wicked Witch. Jacob has already made a fool of himself in front of Maria. How can he face her again?

Gary Paulsen’s slapstick tales capture the “wonderful madness” of growing up in a small town in northern Minnesota, when high spirits, showing off for girls, and general idiocy led Gary and his pals to attempt some amazing stunts! Wacky, daring, just plain nuts - extreme sports lead to extreme fun in new stories from Gary’s boyhood.

Carley would rather have been anywhere but here: a town deep in Minnesota’s farm country, with nothing plentiful except poverty. Still, staying with his Uncle David and his family was better than reform school - which was where Carley was heading. Something was eating away at him, making him do crazy things. No one could understand why - least of all Carley himself. But then David took Carley to his blacksmith forge. And under the grim nights and days of the Minnesota fall, under the glow of hot steel, and the most exhausting work he had ever known, Carley began to see a way to shape his life.

Deep in the woods, in a rustic cabin, lives an old man and the boy he's raised as his own. This sage old man has taught the boy the power of nature and how to live in it and, more importantly, to respect it. In Fishbone's Song, this boy reminisces about the magic of the man who raised him and the tales that he used to tell - all true, but different each time.

Fourteen-year-old Finn is a loner, living with his dad and his amazing dog, Dylan. This summer Finn is hoping for a job where he doesn’t have to talk to anyone except his buddy, Matthew. Then he meets Johanna, who’s living next door. She’s a graduate student in her 20s, cool and funny, and she treats Finn as an equal. Dylan thinks she’s great too. Johanna’s dealing with breast cancer, and Matthew and Finn help take care of her - and come to care for her.

Brian ist zwölf und auf dem Weg zu seinem Vater, als der Pilot des kleinen Flugzeugs, mit dem der Junge unterwegs ist, an einem Herzinfarkt stirbt...

I should have seen it coming. A long time before it came I should have known.I was six or seven years old and there was a girl living next door named Peggy. She was a year older than me and a lot stronger and we were wrestling and she held me down.... All of a sudden it seemed there was something about girls that wasn’t all bad. I didn’t know what it was but I should have known that this first feeling with Peggy Ollendorfer meant that down the road, later, I was in for a big surprise. Afterward, when I was a little older, if you’d asked me what the surprise was like, I’d have said it was about like getting hit by a train.

Ever open your locker and find that some joker has left something really weird inside? Seventh grader Dorso Clayman opens his and finds a dead body. Thirty seconds later, it disappears. It’s not the first bizarre thing that has appeared in his locker and then vanished. The ultimate gamesters have decided to make Dorso and his buddy Frank the target of some strange techno-practical jokes. They’ve hacked into the time line, and things from the past keep appearing in the present. Soon, the pranks aren’t funny anymore - they’re dangerous.

Gary Paulsen was one of the kids who slipped through the cracks, until art and dogs saved him. So are Jake, Jojo, and Jamie, all 12-year-olds who, like Gary Paulsen, had to grow up too fast. Gary Paulsen’s three poignant novellas add up to an unforgettable book.

Tony’s mom, Al, is a terrific single mother who works as a dancer at the Kitty Kat Club. Twelve-year-old Tony is a budding artist, inspired by backstage life at the club. When some of his drawings end up in an art show and catch the attention of the social services agency, Al and Tony find themselves in the middle of a legal wrangle and a media circus. Is Al a responsible mother? It’s the case of the stripper vs. the state, and Al isn’t giving Tony up without a fight.

When a small boy spends Christmas in the snowy Minnesota countryside, he becomes the official scout for his young bedridden cousin, Matthew, who is running out of secrets to explore. Matthew already knows there is no Santa Claus, and he knows his life is ending. As Christmas Eve approaches, the boy worries that he will be unable to find something magical for Matthew. But when that hopeful night arrives, the two are joined in a miraculous surprise that changes their lives forever.

A Gary Paulsen World of Adventure book, The Gorgon Slayer takes young listeners into the exciting world of ancient heroes and monsters.