In the book, Guts, by Gary Paulsen about himself and his life experiences and how they were all near death experiences. The book really went in depth on many of his interesting stories he told. Most of his stories were based off of surviving in the woods without shelter or anything. He based his other books of of his experiences the setting plots in his books are all mostly the same which is in either the woods or somewhere else that is deadly. He really expresses his passion for the wilderness and writing in this book.

His problems about surviving in the wilderness varied it could be from a wild moose attack during his trip in the iditarod or just the deadly weather. All of these problems were basically what the book was made up of and how he survived them. His problems were very hard for him to solve and interesting at the same time. All of his books related to his life and the wild especially Hatchet. This book was very interesting and impactful as a reader to learn many new things about his life and surviving in the wild.

This book would be a great read for a middle grade student who is struggling to find a book to read. Gary Paulsen teaches the reader many lessons throughout the book telling us about his dangerous experiences. The book would be great for anyone who is willing to be taken on a journey with many fascinating stories. I would rate this book a 4 out of 5 star because of its impactful messages sends to the reader. One thing I would change is making the stories a bit shorter but keep the big ideas.

I've always thought that survivalist skills were essential for everyone. Though my reasons are more "prepper" related, Paulsen really brings to light how important it can be period. You never know when you might be stranded somewhere and, while I might have a better shot than the average Joe, I know I'm not even remotely prepared to live off the land. I love Paulsen's attitude towards always learning. Definitely makes me want to work on my wilderness skills and botony and scavenging!

After reading this book, I realized where Mr. Paulsen got most of the information for his main books like “Hatchet”. I enjoyed reading about Gary Paulsen’s life and it is something I can relate to. I thought that his attempt to eat the raw turtle eggs was rather disgusting. I can't imagine what other kinds of food he has tried. He was very brave to run the Iditarod with his dogs in the blizzard. Mr.Paulsen also experienced a plane losing an engine in flight. That had to be very frightening.

The book is an autobiography and is told by Mr. Paulsen’s point of view. The main character is Mr. Paulsen. This allows you to see the events through the eyes of Mr.Paulsen.

The setting mainly takes place in the north woods of Canada. This is where Mr.Paulsen grew up and the woods shaped him into the man he is today.There are also accounts of his Alaskan adventures. Most of the events in Alaska take place because of the dog runs Mr.Paulsen competes in.

The main theme is survival. Gary tells countless stories of how he battled the elements of the wilderness. For instance, he would go and live of the land for weeks at a time with no outside contact. Most of what he accomplished, is done on his own. He has had to deal with rampaging moose and bear attacks. I am shocked that he is still alive.

I would recommend this book to people of any age. I would also suggest that they should be interested in the outdoors and survival.

Guts is about the real-life occurrences that Gary Paulsen encountered in his youth and middle age. Paulsen's other books like Hatchet, Brian's Return, and Brian's Winter were inspired by his experiences in the wilderness. The book starts off describing his love for planes and flying, and how he came about learning to fly. He then goes on to explain some painful encounters while he was in the wilderness. The last part of the book he explains how he hunted and how he prepared- if at all- his "food".
I thought it was a good book mainly because it was an easy read but also his style of writing is easy to follow. It was very easy to picture a paragraph of his writing in my head something that I struggle to do when reading. It's hard to pick a favorite chapter because they were all very intriguing. If I had to choose a favorite chapter it would be the Moose attack. I enjoyed it because it sounded like an awful thing to have to go through. It seemed like the moose was going for the kill; I mean who knew that Moose were so aggressive towards anything that gave them a motive. For example, he mentions how while he was training for the Iditarod he witnessed a Moose charge at a tree and absolutely demolish it until there was nothing left of it. I would recommend this book to anyone who's interested in learning some survival skills or anyone in general just because of the imagery in this book.

Although famous for penning Brian's adventures in Hatchet and its followups, Gary Paulsen himself experienced many adventures and near-death experiences throughout his life. His love of the woods started when he was a young teen needing more food than his neglectful parents provided, so he figured out how to make a bow and arrows and began hunting. Later in life, he flew bush planes and then ran dogsleds, including multiple Iditarods races in Alaska.

These form the setting for specific stories of survival that inspired specific scenes in the Brian books, and Paulsen explains the connections as he tells the stories, which are like a series of loosely collected vignettes.

Readers who enjoy really true-to-life survival stories as well as hunting and fishing stories will enjoy this book. Readers who prefer not to read descriptions of animals or people dying or coming close to death may wish to steer clear.

Personally, I found it gripping and fascinating and read it through in a couple of hours, and I know exactly which middle-school boy I'm going to recommend it to first.

Title: “Guts”
Pages: 160
Author: Gary Paulsen
Copyright date: January 23, 2001
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Genre: Non-fiction
ISBN 0-385-326-50-5
Price: $16.95
Viewer: Cooper

The book ‘’GUTS’’ are real stories that involve the author, Gary Paulsen. He writes about the experiences he had when he was outdoors and when he was in the Air Force. The book is full of his adventures like hunting, fishing, and surviving in the wilderness. He explains how these adventures gave him ideas to write many other books such as ‘’Hatchet’’ and ‘’Brian’s Hunt.’’
tI enjoyed this book because there were different stories in each chapter. It was interesting learning about the author’s life. I like the outdoors and it was fun reading about his adventures.
tI gave this book a 4 star rating because it was interesting learning about the author and his life. It was entertaining and easy to read. I would recommend this book to adults and young readers who enjoy the outdoors such as going on a fishing or hunting trips. Readers will also enjoy learning about survival in the wilderness. The interaction he had with different animals is interesting and exciting.
Here are three books I would recommend for adventure readers. “The Ice Queen” is a book about how catching a walleye can save a family and their business. “The Lost Deer Camp” is a story about a boy who is sent away to live with his aunt and uncle. He is told not to go in the woods, but he doesn’t listen. He finds something in the woods that he never would have imagined would be there! “The Day "It Rained Ducks” is a story about a father and daughter and their black lab. They are going duck hunting and get caught in a dangerous storm. They fight to survive. These are all good reading choices because they are based around family and learning about the outdoors and learning how to be strong.


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I was looking for a good read aloud for memoirs at school and think this is the one! Intense but relatable, I have students who will connect with the home life and hopefully be inspired by the drive to be self reliant. Not to mention this might inspire them to read Hatchet ;)

Guts by Gary Paulsen is less of a story and more a collection of thoughts as to where the author got some of the ideas he used in his book Hatchet. A warning here--this is NOT the book to read immediately before or after eating ANYTHING! It is, however, and interesting insight into his thought process as an author.

After I read this book, I went through a survivalist phase.

Guts is Gary Paulsen’s memoir of true experiences that inspired his Hatchet Adventure series. I listened to the audiobook after reading the entire series. It was very interesting to learn that most of the material for the series came from Paulsen’s own childhood experiences. It was definitely geared for those interested in either the Hatchet series or survival skills. I enjoyed most of it, although I have to admit that the actual title chapter, Guts, was a little more than I could take. It truly was about guts… lots of guts described in great detail. The other chapters were interesting and valuable. It was a great break from technology and presented a world that today’s young adults rarely experience. Definitely a good survival read!

Paulsen explains early on that he has lived through or witnessed every scene he wrote into the Hatchet series: not the exact circumstance in every case, but close enough to confirm that he knows what he’s writing about. He has lived through more than almost any of us can imagine. And that’s the goal of this book: to share some of those real-life stories, and help us imagine, and help us learn and appreciate what he has come to love about the wilderness.

I’m no wilderness survivalist, I’ve never hunted, and I’ve never shot anything more powerful than a BB gun. But none of that matters – Paulsen’s stories are spellbinding. Whether he’s eating eyeballs, marveling at chickadees, or watching a deer kill a child with one swift kick, Paulsen has my full attention. And admiration, as a writer and as a voice for humanity in nature.

Due to widespread clamor among his fans to hear the true stories of how Gary Paulsen gained the intimate knowledge of wilderness survival he wrote about to such convincing effect in Hatchet and the other Brian's Saga novels, the author released Father Water, Mother Woods: Essays on Fishing and Hunting in the North Woods in the 1990s. It was well-received, but readers lobbied for more. They craved specifics about the incidents in Mr. Paulsen's life that directly inspired thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson's harrowing adventures in the Canadian bush, adventures that could easily have killed the boy before rescuers arrived. Thus Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books was born, a memoir specifically of the events that started the author thinking about writing a novel featuring a kid forced by circumstances to survive in the wilderness, far from the comfort and protection of modern urbania. For readers who want the scoop on Hatchet, Guts has everything you could want...and more.

"The wilderness pulled at me—still does—in a way that at first baffled me and then became a wonder for me."

—Guts, P. 71

Gary Paulsen led a life of more variety than almost anyone, and volunteer paramedic in the Colorado boondocks was among his myriad occupations. As the only first responder close enough to react meaningfully in an emergency, Paulsen bore responsibility for the lives of many. This was where he learned about heart attacks, the most common malady of patients he was called to help. Paulsen could do nothing to save the majority of myocardial infarction victims, and one death that happened right in front of him haunted the author long after, coming through in Brian's experience with the pilot of his small plane who suffered a heart attack and died while their vehicle was airborne. As a paramedic and as an officer in the U.S. military, Paulsen also witnessed numerous plane crashes, some fatal but most not, and had a scare while on tour for his 1986 Newbery Honor book Dogsong when the engine of the small plane he was a passenger in sputtered and died. The pilot landed without any problem, but the helplessness of hanging 3,000 feet up in the air in a plane that had no engine would inform Brian's panicked response when the same thing happened to him with dire consequences. Another life-or-death situation involving a small plane saw an intrepid bush pilot flying into an insane winter storm in Alaska to rescue Paulsen and his sled dogs during the Iditarod. The incident leaves an indelible impression even as the scene it sets is downright comical. By the time Paulsen was honorably discharged from the military and had trained to earn his pilot's license, he was well on his way to knowing enough to write intelligently about Brian's plane crash.

Bizarre animal assaults play a pivotal role in Brian's Saga, from rampaging moose to hungry bears, from surly skunks to monstrous swarms of mosquitos. Paulsen relates anecdotes about his own encounters with these assailants and more, but the most memorable may be when a massive cow moose waylaid him on a stormy night in the Alaskan bush. The attack was unprovoked and nightmarishly prolonged, as attacks feel when blow after vicious blow is hurting us and there's nothing we can do to stop it. The moose had Paulsen facedown in the snow and would not relent from stomping on him, bloodying the helpless musher and cracking his bones. "She completely worked me over. I didn't count the kicks and stomps but there were dozens. She stopped after a bit and I peeked at her, outlined against the snow, and she was staring at me, listening for my breath, and when at last I could hold it no longer and had to breathe again she heard it and renewed the attack. I don't know how long she kept after me. It seemed hours, days. I lay as still as possible, trying to hide my breathing, but she kept coming back until I thought I was dead—and then she backed off. Thinking she was gone, I tried a small move, but she jumped me again. Finally I think she was convinced I was finished and she moved off into the forest." Sometimes all you can do when you're assaulted that way is curl up in a trembling little ball and hope to survive, and that's how Paulsen (and Brian) lived through their run-ins with lunatic moose. The only way to endure in a world that threatens your existence is to adapt and learn from its painful lessons, to not make serious mistakes twice. "The solution to facing all these dangers, a solution that came very rapidly to me and to Brian, is knowledge. It can come from anywhere; from reading, from listening to people or from personal experience. However it comes, the knowledge must be there." Accumulating wisdom is the way to fend off danger whether you're in the wilderness or the safety of suburbia, which presents its own perils. Learning to avoid pitfalls is a trait possessed by every survivor.

Brian's ability to stay alive in the bush hinged on fashioning functional hunting weapons with no one to teach him how, and Paulsen recounts his own experiences in this area. Crafting a usable bow and arrows from wood is hard work, and learning to hunt with them is more difficult still, but Paulsen and Brian each eventually did. The process requires attention to detail, and the author doesn't scrimp on explaining how to carve the wood and arrows just right. If the feathers aren't the proper shape and style, your arrows won't fly accurately. Once you make a kill, you have to clean and cook the animal, and that's at least as much work as carving handmade weapons. Paulsen relates his long, arduous journey after killing his first deer with a bow and arrow as a fifteen-year-old, dragging the dead buck that weighed more than him miles from the scene of the hunt to where he'd stashed his bicycle. It's hard to imagine how he biked four miles home while attempting to keep two hundred pounds of dead deer in balance, but Paulsen at that age was already adapting to the ways of nature, learning to be inconspicuous and predict what would happen next in the drama of the natural world around him. He knew it was essential to never stop growing and improving. "To learn, to be willing to learn how a thing works, to understand an animal in nature, or how to write a book or run a dog team or sail a boat, to always keep learning is truly wonderful." This from someone who was not a diligent student in school, but had a passion to learn from nature the grand truths of life that school teachers rarely address. Spending time in school does not always equate to learning.

Revolting food choices were part of life for Brian after his plane went down, but starvation pushed him to choke down edibles he wouldn't have wanted to look at in his previous life. Paulsen had high standards for the realism of Brian's Saga: "When I set out to write the Brian books I was concerned that everything that happened to Brian should be based on reality, or as near reality as fiction could be. I did not want him to do things that wouldn't or couldn't really happen in his situation. Consequently I decided to write only of things that had happened to me or things I purposely did to make certain they would work for Brian." This includes the gross experiment of eating raw turtle eggs, which didn't end well for Paulsen. His commitment to authenticity in Brian's Saga was admirable, and stems from the undoubtedly finest philosophical observation in Guts, made in an earlier chapter. "We have grown away from knowledge, away from knowing what something is really like, toward knowing only what somebody else says it is like. There seems to be a desire to ignore the truth in favor of drama." These words have so many practical applications, I hardly know where to begin. We outsource our religious, political, and social opinions to others who tell us how they think things are, not bothering to independently inform ourselves so we can challenge the pundits when they reason wrongly. Society has grown away from self-discovered knowledge and toward parroting the talking points of professional opinion givers, and that's not healthy. When we reject the nuance of reality in favor of black-and-white systemic ideology, we don't further education as Paulsen promotes it; we further ignorance, hampering our ability to recognize our errors of logic and reverse positions if the facts demand it. Gary Paulsen writes with uncompromising regard for truth, and that's why I love his work. Guts ends with a chapter on rudimentary cooking methods in the wild—how to heat water, make meat or fish stew, and cook using wood planks, a roasting spit, or a pot made from birch bark. It's important not to waste any part of the animals you hunt, because a next meal is never promised in the great outdoors. Paulsen concludes with an anecdote about the time he roasted buffalo meat for himself while employed as a movie production laborer, enjoying the fine meal under a starry night sky with a friend and reflecting on how it must have felt for early man to do the same every night. That started him thinking of writing a story about a modern-day kid having to survive under those conditions, and the rest, as they say, was history.

The wisdom of Guts isn't as enlightening or plentiful as that in Woodsong, an earlier Gary Paulsen memoir of wilderness life, and the stories aren't nearly as emotional, but it's a good book. I'd give it at least two and a half stars, and strongly consider the full three. Gary Paulsen created something unforgettable in his Brian's Saga books, and I have loved them. They changed me for the better, and that can't be said of most literature. We've never seen a writing talent quite like Gary Paulsen, and we are oh so lucky to have him.