{"product_id":"father-water-mother-woods-isbn-9780440219842","title":"Father Water, Mother Woods","description":"Survival in the wilderness--Gary Paulsen writes about it so powerfully in his novels \u003ci\u003eHatchet \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e The River \u003c\/i\u003ebecause he's lived it.  These essays recount his adventures alone and with friends, along the rivers and in the woods of northern Minnesota. There, fishing and hunting are serious business, requiring skill, secrets, and inspiration. Luck, too--not every big one gets away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book takes readers through the seasons, from the incredible taste of a spring fish fresh from the smokehouse, to the first sight of the first deer, to the peace of the winter days spent dreaming by the stove in a fishhouse on the ice. In Paulsen's north country, every expedition is a major one, and often hilarious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce again Gary Paulsen demonstrates why he is one of America's most beloved writers, for he shows us fishing and hunting as pleasure, as art, as companionship, and as sources of life's deepest lessons.\"This book is obviously a feast for the outdoor lover--the hunter, fisherman, or camper--but it will also draw those who love the beauty of the carefully crafted description, so detailed and vivid....The essence of Paulsen.\"\u003ci\u003e--Booklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The pieces are rooted in the details of a youth spent in search of perfection: the perfect cast, perfect catch, perfect shot...On target.\" \u003ci\u003e--School Library Joumal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Descriptions of light and water, of fish and wildlife, kindle in the reader a measure of the author's own complex respect for nature.\" \u003cbr\u003e--\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly,\u003c\/i\u003e Starred Review\u003cb\u003eGary Paulsen\u003c\/b\u003e is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor books: \u003ci\u003eThe Winter Room, Hatchet,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDogsong\u003c\/i\u003e. He won the Margaret A. Edwards Award given by the American Library Association for his lifetime achievement in young adult literature. Among his Random House books are \u003ci\u003eRoad Trip\u003c\/i\u003e (written with his son, Jim Paulsen); \u003ci\u003eFamily Ties\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eVote\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eCrush\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eFlat Broke\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eLiar, Liar\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003ePaintings from the Cave\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eWoods Runner\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eMasters of Disaster\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eLawn Boy\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eNotes from the Dog\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Amazing Life of Birds\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eMolly McGinty Has a Really Good Day\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eHow Angel Peterson Got His Name\u003c\/i\u003e;\u003ci\u003e Guts\u003c\/i\u003e; and five books about Francis Tucket's adventures in the Old West. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults. He divides his time between his home in Alaska, his ranch in New Mexico, and his sailboat on the Pacific Ocean.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRuth Wright Paulsen\u003c\/b\u003e is an artist, illustrator, and author of books for young readers. She graduated from the University of Colorado, where she studied painting, and then taught art at a junior high school, which informs her illustrations for children’s books. She frequently collaborates with her husband, author Gary Paulsen, and her illustrations can be seen in his books \u003ci\u003eFather Water, Mother Woods\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMy Life in Dog Years\u003c\/i\u003e. She lives and works in New Mexico.\u003ci\u003eDown by the Power Dam\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery year it is necessary for fishing to start.  Even though it has gone on year-round it must have a beginning each year, and fishing always started in the spring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the small northern town in Minnesota where we were raised it is possible that everything started in the spring, but fishing was the most important thing, and it became vital to watch for the signs that it would begin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere were two primary indications.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne was the car on the ice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePollution was not then considered nor discussed, and each year the town would put an old car on the frozen ice of the river and tie wires from the car to a clock on a tree on the bank.  The idea was that when the ice started to go out the car would fall through the ice, trip the clock, and there would be an exact record of when this event occurred.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMuch was made of this whole business.  It was not just a way to dispose of old cars-- although over the years the bottom of the river became littered with them, and god only knows how many fishing lures were lost by people trying to fish around the cars and catching their hooks on door handles or bumpers.  More importantly, the old car on the ice became a contest that occupied the whole town.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEverybody guessed at the exact moment when the ice would progress enough into the \"rotten\" stage (also known as \"honeycomb ice,\" which I would come to know intimately and with horror later, running dog teams on small lakes and the Bering Sea) and allow the car to drop to the bottom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt started that simply.  At the courthouse or the library there was a large bulletin board, and for a dollar you could sign the board and write down your guess to win the car-through-the-ice raffle.  Of course, you never met anyone who had won, but only those who knew somebody who had won, and therein, in the winning, the simplicity was lost.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe raffle dominated the town.  Merchants competed with each other to put up prizes for the winner so that along with a sizable cash award there were dozens, hundreds of other prizes, and all of them had to do with summer and most of them had to do with fishing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRods, reels, life jackets, lures, anchors, boats, picnic baskets, motors--it was said that a person could win the raffle and be set for life as far as fishing or summer was concerned, and as the time approached people would find reasons to walk or drive along the river to see the old car.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Oh, I had to run down to the elevator and check on grain prices,\" they would say.  \"The car has one wheel through but she's still hanging there.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"My aunt's been feeling poor,\" they would say, about an aunt they hadn't spoken to in twelve years, \"and I thought I should stop by and check on her.  The car has both rear wheels down now.  She's just hanging there, teetering...\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Your aunt?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No, the car, you ninny--the car on the ice.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd as the time grew still closer there were those who would come and sit with bottles in paper sacks and fur caps and boogers hanging out their noses and drink and spit and scratch and wait and sometimes pray; just sit there and wait for the car to fall and make their fortunes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNaturally it never happened when anybody thought it would happen, but it always signaled the end, the final end of winter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the beginning of spring.  Also, when the ice became that rotten it began the signal to the fish that spawning was close.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe second indication was the light.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll winter the light had been low, flat, cold.  In midwinter it became light in the morning at nine or so and began to get dark at three-thirty or four in the afternoon on a cloudy day, and most of the time it seemed to be dark and cold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut as spring came and the ice became rotten on the river the light moved, was a thing alive.  The sun came back north, like an old friend that seemed to have been gone forever, and it changed everything, changed the way things looked. There was still snow, still cold at light, but during the day it was brighter, clearer; everything seemed bathed in soft gold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeople changed as well.  During the winter, talk--what talk there was--was always short and to the point and almost always seemed to be on weather-related problems: how difficult it was to start a car in the cold, who was sick with a cold, who was getting sick, who had been sick and was getting well only to get sick again, how it was necessary to drain the car radiators at night (this was before antifreeze) and refill them with warm water when it was time to start them the next day and how they almost never started and wasn't it a shame that the car companies, the Car Companies with all their money, couldn't design a car to start in the winter?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe light changed all that, made the winter end, though there was still more cold weather, still more mornings when nostril hairs stuck to the insides of your nose and the combed ducktails froze on the way to school, more days when it was possible to play the joke where somebody talks somebody else--and where do they keep coming from, the ones who can be talked into these things?--into pushing their tongue out on a frozen propane tank where it would stick and leave a piece of tongue-skin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe light changed all things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was the same sun, and it seemed to come up at the same time, but it rose higher and made gold, new gold that altered everything.  Jacobsen's Bakery, where we would get free fresh hot rolls sometimes in the morning to carry when we delivered papers--two rolls each, one in the mouth and one still hot in the pocket of the jacket for later--the bakery was transformed.  It had been an old brick building with a loading ramp on the back for the truck to get the fresh bread, and now, in the new gold light it became a bright castle of fresh bread smells and beauty; rising out of the alley next to the Montgomery Ward (always, always called the Monkey Wards) store.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe trees near the library, still without leaves, still with scrabbly arms that reached into the sky, did not seem ominous now but reaching.  And the library seemed to shine with warmth and beckoned in the new light, and it became impossible to believe in winter any longer, only in the newness of spring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd fishing.","brand":"Laurel Leaf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304115523813,"sku":"NP9780440219842","price":6.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780440219842.jpg?v=1767726770","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/father-water-mother-woods-isbn-9780440219842","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}