Learning how much Gary Paulsen did on his own as a child, including hunting for his own food and making his own shelter when his parents were drunk, I can appreciate his Hatchet series of book all the more. It is so different from how most children grow up today in the USA, that Paulsen came to be a writer at all is a testament to the potential for anyone to be a writer, that everyone has a story in them if only the confidence and ability to tell it is nurtured.

My favorite quote in the book is "hunting when it wasn't necessarily pleasant to hunt; hunting because he had to, hunting to live." The book so far has been filled with a few tragic events like a little boy being stabbed in the chest by a deer with his horns. Gary paulsen talks about of life lessons in this book like how to hunt, fish, catch, and many other things. One of the things in the book I can see coming up soon is i feel like he is going to get attacked by a buck himself that is going to hit him really hard. The parts of this book ia ma enjoying are the parts when he is out in the woods and he is hunting and going through dangerous events like the moose hitting him off his sled and stomping on him and trying to kill him. But the one thing i do dislike about his book is that everytime he does something he has to take time and tell how it is connected to the book and it really takes the intensity and your focus away from the book. i would recommend this book to everyone of my classmates because it really gets your blood pumping when he is in intense moments like him getting attacked or him seeing something dangerous.

This book was short, but still was a slow read for me. I didn’t want to read about the same “look at this terrible thing that happened to me, that’s why brain did it”, but alas, that was the entire book. I wanted to love this book, but it just didn’t draw me in or captivate me. Maybe it’s because I haven’t read hatchet yet, but Gary just didn’t seem like a great writer.

Now I know why the Hatchet and Brian books did not appeal to me. This book is a nonfiction book about how many of the scenarios and situations came about in Hatchet. Very interesting but not my cup of tea. Hunting and the wilderness do not have an appeal to me. But the stories were well told and and interesting.

I did notice something in this book though. Paulsen talks often in his book about earning money for food and school clothes as a child. I am a mother and thought, "That is great that he is helping his parents out. He is older. He must have lived during the depression." But other clues lead me to believe he is not that old. (He was in the army as a young man during the Korean War.) There is one sentence in the entire book in which he discusses his parents. He said that he had to hunt because his parents were in one of their drunks. His parents were drunks, did not hold jobs, and left him to fend for himself at an early age. I am impressed with what he has done with his life. Very interesting book.

This was a fabulously interesting yet short backstory of Paulsen's experiences that inspired his writing in the Brian and Hatchet books. It isn't a full autobiography, as reading his bio on the author page gleans even more info about his incredibly unconventional life history. But after reading Guts, my impressions of Hatchet have changed dramatically as he's actually incorporated real-life events (which seem so outlandish to be true to most) into his stories.

Guts appeals to the outdoor enthusiast, hunter, survivalist with many "how to" scenarios and what Paulsen learned from lengthy outdoor stints and racing the Iditarod. His style is short on deep emotional reflections with only a passing glance at his parents and family situation which I think was perhaps a catalyst for his life in and after the early teen years. I admired his immense patience and purity at thirteen to bow hunt from handmade equipment. What a life he's led! I hope he writes an autobiography at some point.

Due to widespread clamor among fans to hear the true stories of how Gary Paulsen gained the intimate knowledge of wilderness survival he wrote about 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.

"Survival is the key to life,"Brian says as he describes his ways of living in the woods and how to survive. Guts teaches you some valuable survival tips and tricks such as fishing, hunting, cooking, and surviving all elements of life.
Guts is the story line behind hatchet. Brian's plane pilot has a heart attack and lands somewhere in the wilderness. Guts gives you an insight on how Brian survived this devastating accident.
If you are interested in learning survival skills and how Brian survived, read Guts by Gary Paulsen. I thought this book was really interesting on how he could survive against all odds.

The plot of this book is its about a man name Gary Paulsen. He went through a lot of things in life that were cray. so he decided to write books about it called Hatchet and the Brian books. it covered everything in his life from being attacked by moose to being eaten alive by mosquito's. it literally covers everything. That's the plot of the book in my opinion.

(Imagery) He stomped and ripped and tore at that tree until it was broken off at the ground(36). (Imagery) I ran outside, barefoot, in my long underwear and my headlamp(43).(Imagery) I grabbed the small axe I used for cutting frozen meat and stormed in after the moose screaming and cursing louder than the dogs(44).(Imagery) His chest and stomach were turning red where the bucks hooves had stabbed him.(55) (Imagery) The small deer with blood on his hooves and forelegs stamping his feet in anger.(56)

In conclusion, i thought this book was a really great book. it never lost my attention and i think everybody should read it. I think this book is meant for anyone even if you hate biography books. I think everybody would like this book its fast paced enough to keep you reading. but not so fast you don't understand whats going on. In conclusion i think everybody should read this book.

Following Paulsen's death at 82, just a couple of weeks ago, and after having finished the rest of "the Brian books" I decided to try this non-fiction, where Gary Paulsen shares his real-life experiences, which he injected into his famous series. Surprisingly, my five-year-old responded very well to this book, barely flinching at the gory scenes, including the one where Paulsen talks about how dangerous deer are. This book begins each chapter with a quote from the book that started the series—Hatchet—providing Paulsen's real-life version of that same scene. I admire Paulsen for his commitment to writing fiction that is concretely based on fact—and in his case the factual way to survive in the wild.

You will be missed as an author, Gary Paulsen.

“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 was a really great companion piece to the Brian series from Gary Paulsen and I think it brought a lot of really crucial insight into the character of Brian throughout the books. I think the quote above is the most important aspect and piece of information of this book, and I think that’s why the five books that follow the story of Brian feel so realistic and so grounded in reality. It’s because they are reality, of course, there’s dramatization involved, but for the most part, everything that happens in the books happened to Gary Paulsen. I think that if you’ve read the Brian series, or even Hatchet for that matter, this offers some fascinating stories and insight from the author.

"Guts" is an autobiography by Gary Paulsen. He talks about experieces he had in his childhood through his adult years. When he was young he made his own bow and went out hunting for days just like Brian did in "Hatchet." He then took those experiences and wrote "Hatchet" and the Brian series. This book is for anyone who wants to learn more about Gary Paulsen and the story behind the Hatchet series.

Again, I'm in a situation where "I liked it well enough, it deserves three stairs" does not connect with Goodreads' ratings so leaving it unrated, but, well, I liked it well enough. I think if I had ever read or been interested in the Brian Books, I would have found this to be significantly more interesting. There were still plenty of parts that were intriguing, but I definitely think that people who have read Paulsen's fictitious works are more likely to find this interesting that I did.