Twin Cities Reading 'Hatchet'

Sled dogs and youngsters recently gathered outside the downtown Minneapolis Public Library to celebrate Hatchet (Bradbury, 1987) as the book selection for the Twin Cities One Book project. The program, which runs from September 15 to November 15, encourages residents of all ages in Minneapolis and St. Paul to join together in reading Gary Paulsen's popular survival tale set in the remote Canadian wilderness.

The selection committee's spokesperson, Laura Johnson, calls Hatchet "a story of struggles, achievements, and reaching your goal—and we felt that could apply to people at any stage of life," reported the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.

Paulsen, among the most popular of children's authors, beat the odds in his own life with the help of a librarian.

"Everything in my life sucked when I was a kid," recalls Paulsen, now 63. "My folks were drunks. I was such a poor student I had to repeat ninth grade."

One night, he slipped into a northern Minnesota library to get warm, and a librarian gave him his first library card and a selection of books.

"It saved me, it really did," he writes in a letter to fans. "I don't think any of the good things that have happened to me would have been possible without that librarian and libraries in general."