How Angel Peterson Got His Name

How Angel Peterson Got His Name

WHEN YOU GROW up in a small town in the north woods, you have to make your own excitement. High spirits, idiocy, and showing off for the girls inspire Gary Paulsen and his friends to attempt: • Shooting waterfalls in a barrel • The first skateboarding • Breaking the world record for speed on skis by being towed behind a souped-up car, and then . . . hitting gravel • Jumping three barrels like motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, except they only have bikes • Wrestling . . . a bear? Extreme sports lead to extreme fun in new tales from Gary’s boyhood. A New York Times Bestseller Grade 5-8-Paulsen accounts for his 13th year "of wonderful madness" when he and his friends tried to shoot a waterfall in a barrel, break the world record for speed on skis, hang glide with an Army surplus parachute, and perform other daredevilish stunts. Readers will be drawn to the term "extreme sports" but the story is more accurately one generation's version of homemade fun in the days following the Korean War when "radio was king" and the great outdoors served as the playground. Like much of his autobiographical fiction, these sketches are more episodic than plot driven. Paulsen exhibits a wry sense of humor and storytelling ability as if he were sitting on a country porch with eager listeners at his knee. In one chapter, a friend borrowed a quarter to wrestle a bear at the carnival to get the attention of a girl, only to be swept out of the ring by a giant paw, like "a hockey puck with legs." The stories are fresh and lively and will especially appeal to reluctant middle-grade readers. Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Gr. 6-9. Every boy who is 13 or about to be 13 or who remembers being 13 should read this short story collection based on people and events from Paulsen's own life. Even though the action takes place 50 or so years ago, they will recognize themselves. And every girl who has ever liked a 13-year-old-boy, or been related to one, or wondered about one, should read this, too, because although the book doesn't explain why boys like to do things like pee on electric fences, it does give an insight into how their funny little minds work. Writing with humor and sensitivity, Paulsen shows boys moving into adolescence believing they can do anything: wrestle with bears; shoot waterfalls in a barrel; fly eight-by-twelve-foot Army surplus kites--and hang on, even as they land in the chicken coop. None of them dies (amazingly), and even if Paulsen exaggerates the teensiest bit, his tales are side-splittingly funny and more than a little frightening. GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “These episodes will not only keep young readers, of both sexes, in stitches, they’re made to order for reading aloud.”— Kirkus Reviews , Starred “The stories are fresh and lively and will especially appeal to reluctant middle-grade readers.”— School Library Journal , Starred “This collection will likely hook adults as much as young readers.”— Publishers Weekly From the Trade Paperback edition. When you grow up in a small town in the north woods, you have to make your own excitement. High spirits, idiocy, and showing off for the girls inspire Gary Paulsen and his friends to attempt: ? Shooting waterfalls in a barrel ? The first skateboarding ? Jumping three barrels like motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel?except they only have bikes ? Hangliding with an Army surplus target kite ? Bungee jumping ? Wrestling . . . a bear? Extreme sports lead to extreme fun in new tales from Gary?s boyhood. Gary Paulsen is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people. His most recent books are The Glass Café and Brian’s Hun t. 1 How Angel Peterson Got His Name He is as old as me and that means he has had a life, has raised children and made a career and succeeded and maybe failed a few times and can look back on things, on old memories. Carl Peterson--that's the name his mother and father gave him, but from the age of thirteen and for the rest of his life not a soul, not his wife or children or any friend has ever known him by that name. He is always called Angel. Angel Peterson, and I was there when he got his name. We lived in northwestern Minnesota, up near the Canadian border and not far from the eastern border of North Dakota. The area is mostly cleared now and almost all farmland, but in the late forties and early fifties it was thickly forested and covered with small lakes and was perhaps the best hunting and fishing country in the world, absolutely crawling with fish and game. My friends and I spent most of our time in the woods, hunting, fishing or just camping, but we lived in town and had town lives as well. Because the area was so remote, many farms still did not have electricity, nearly none had phones and the rare ones that did were on party lines, with all users on the same line so that any