About the Author

GARY PAULSEN (1939 - 2021) wrote nearly two hundred books for young people, including the Newbery Honor Books Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room.

Reviews

"There are only a handful of indispensable dog books...Winterdance belongs among [those] classics...It is hard to find a page in this laconic book without an insight, hard to find a word that could be cut without loss...Winterdance is beautiful and is very funny and it's about and dogs and their souls."--Washington Post "Winterdance will be around long after most outdoor adventure books have been forgotten. What could have been an ordinary journal becomes instead a revelation." -Minneapolis/St. Paul Star-Tribune "In the tradition of Jack London...[Paulsen's] prose is spare and physical; at its best, it has the fluid simplicity of Hemingway...What's most moving is his behavior at the end of the race; 'I didn't want to go in, ' he says. Armchair travelers will understand." -Booklist "A breathtaking, heart-stopping, roller coaster ride that depicts the brutal reality of the Iditarod, the magnificent beauty of Alaska, and the unique, if not surreal, relationship that develops between man and dog."--Nevada Weekly --

The scene was unnerving to a novice: television cameras, loudspeakers, crowds and nearly 2000 excited dogs all jammed a street in downtown Anchorage. It was the start of the Iditarod dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome over 1180 miles of rugged terrain. Paulsen ( Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass ) had run dogs in Minnesota, but was woefully unprepared in 1983 for his first Iditarod and for conditions in Alaska. After getting lost with his 15-dog team in Anchorage at the start, he and the dogs later took a wrong turn again, adding 120 miles to the journey. Attacked by a moose, suffering frostbite and sleeplessness, he nevertheless completed the race in 17 days and was eager to run another. Paulsen presents a fine depiction of the landscape and of dogs at work in this gripping story of adventure and endurance. Photos. First serial to Readers Digest; author tour. (Mar.)

"There are only a handful of indispensable dog books...Winterdance belongs among [those] classics...It is hard to find a page in this laconic book without an insight, hard to find a word that could be cut without loss...Winterdance is beautiful and is very funny and it's about and dogs and their souls."--Washington Post "Winterdance will be around long after most outdoor adventure books have been forgotten. What could have been an ordinary journal becomes instead a revelation." -Minneapolis/St. Paul Star-Tribune "In the tradition of Jack London...[Paulsen's] prose is spare and physical; at its best, it has the fluid simplicity of Hemingway...What's most moving is his behavior at the end of the race; 'I didn't want to go in, ' he says. Armchair travelers will understand." -Booklist "A breathtaking, heart-stopping, roller coaster ride that depicts the brutal reality of the Iditarod, the magnificent beauty of Alaska, and the unique, if not surreal, relationship that develops between man and dog."--Nevada Weekly --