45 pages • 1 hour read
Gary PaulsenA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Content Warning: Guts includes detailed portrayals of survival situations, including human fear, danger, injury, and death. The book includes graphic descriptions of hunting, trapping, fishing, and killing wild animals, as well as processing the bodies for food and tools.
Gary James Paulsen, author of the beloved wilderness survival bildungsroman Hatchet, wants to explain the inspiration behind the middle-grade novel that propelled him into the spotlight. As a result of the popularity of Hatchet, Paulsen receives letters from fans asking “about those parts of my personal life that paralleled Brian’s” (Guts: Foreword). According to Paulsen, readers crave specifics about his life, the events that inspired Hatchet, and how survival is won in the wild. Thus, Guts was written to answer these questions and satiate his readers.
Hatchet opens with a heart attack. Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is flying over remote Canadian wilderness on a Cessna 406 bush plane when the pilot has a heart attack and dies. Brian is forced to pilot the tiny craft, ultimately crash-landing on a remote lake and swimming to safety. To explain the inspiration for the pilot’s graphic death in Hatchet’s opening scenes, and to lend reason to the author’s in-depth knowledge of what happens to heart attack victims, Paulsen describes his background as a rural emergency ambulance driver.
By Gary Paulsen
Brian's Hunt
Gary Paulsen
Brian's Return
Gary Paulsen
Brian's Winter
Gary Paulsen
Canyons
Gary Paulsen
Dogsong
Gary Paulsen
Harris and Me: A Summer Remembered
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Hatchet
Gary Paulsen
How Angel Peterson Got His Name
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Lawn Boy
Gary Paulsen
Liar, Liar
Gary Paulsen
Masters of Disaster
Gary Paulsen
My Life in Dog Years
Gary Paulsen
Nightjohn
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Northwind
Gary Paulsen
Soldiers Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers
Gary Paulsen
The Crossing
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The Monument
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The River
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The Transall Saga
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The Voyage of the Frog
Gary Paulsen