Gary Paulsen was born on May 17, 1939 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father served in the military, and Paulsen did not meet him until 1946, when he and his family joined him in the Philippines. Paulsen remembers running wild at age seven, learning about street life firsthand. Eventually, in 1949, he and his parents moved back to America, moving frequently about the country as his father's postings were changed.

He recalls being antisocial and a very poor student until he was a teenager.

Paulsen was selling newspapers to patrons of bars and had learned that if he gave them time to have a few drinks they would pay twenty-five cents instead of ten cents for a paper. On a cold day while waiting for the right time to start selling his papers he entered a library to get out of the cold. An elderly librarian asked whether he...