Two Unusual Kids Books
Winterkill (1976) is one of Paulsen’s harder to find books. Set in Minnesota, like many of his earlier novels, the themes in this book appear in later Paulsen novels that received more acclaim. It is also the first appearance of Carl who is discussed in more depth in Paulsen’s novel Dancing Carl (1983). Paulsen would also later revisit stories from this book in his last published autobiography Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood (2021) just prior to the author’s death.
The unnamed narrator of the story is a 14 year old kid ( a stand-in for Paulsen himself) who has had it rough. His parents are alcoholics. Later, he ends up working on a farm for a cruel religious man who tries to kill him. He is “saved” by a very tough and often cruel cop. The cop, Duda, takes him to another farm where he works hard and is first exposed to kind people. This doesn’t last for long. When he goes back to live with his parents, things are worse than ever.
The boy’s situation begins to become more normal when he meets a good-looking girl named Irene that goes to his school. After he kisses her, he is in love. He even gets a job at a bowling alley so that he can have money to impress her. But the job turns out to be nasty, and he frequently receives beatings by the greaser kids who work there. Later, Irene starts dating a more popular boy who gets her pregnant. After they break up, she turns to the narrator and asks him to marry her.
Still in love with Irene, the boy decides that he will need money if they are going to be married and have a child. So he makes a bad decision and decides to rob a neighbor’s house. Duda catches him in the act. But instead of reporting the crime, Duda attempts to reform the boy in his own way. The boy begins accompanying Duda on his nighttime outings. They get into habit of hunting from the car, rabbits mostly. He learns to understand Duda’s hard edges and begins to see the man behind all the toughness. In a sense, Duda represents the father figure he never had. The boy begins to care for Duda until he witnesses Duda violently murder two bankrobbers. Instead of continuing to follow Duda’s lead, the Paulsen stand-in becomes harder-edged himself, in this coming-of-age turn of events.
Winterkill is one of Paulsen’s most personal works. It was also his most controversial book, and unlike most of his prolific output, was never reprinted in paperback format.
Cynthia Rylant's, A Fine White Dust, is another book written for children that defies any sort of label. I'm not sure that a finer book about loneliness, religion, friendship and family exists. It packs an emotional wallop. Because it deals with a complex subject, religion, but told in a sparse and simple style, it could also work just as well as a young adult book (or a book for any age). Released in 1987, it was both an ALA notable children's book and ALA best book for young adults. The title refers to the disintegration of a ceramic cross ( and not to cocaine, as I originally imagined when I first picked this book up!).
The story is told in the first person of Pete, an eighth grader who feels drawn to his local church. His parents are not religious and his best friend Rufus is a self-proclaimed atheist. When Pete notices a hitchhiker new to his small town, he first thinks the stranger might be a dangerous murderer. But when he sees the man again, it is at his church's revival meeting. It turns out that the drifter is a Preacher Man. When he declares that Pete is born-again, Pete feels a relentless draw to the stranger. He decides that the man's mission, is also his own. Feeling the call from God, and answering Preacher Man's lonely cry for companionship on the road, Peter decides to abandon his best friend and family in search of spiritual meaning.
This is a weighty decision for such a young person (or any person) to bare and ultimately Pete's decision is the heart of this story. I love this book because it turns the typical coming of age story inside out. Usually, in stories concerning runaways, a young person abandons their home based on unsupportive parents or personal problems with drugs, self-esteem or a difficult love relationship. In Rylant's A Fine White Dust, we have the opposite. Pete is secure in his interests and beliefs, he has a loving family and a good friend. Yet the desire to escape is still there based on a very personal system of beliefs that only Pete can come to terms with, despite outside forces. Rylant lets the reader interpret the character of The Preacher Man on our own terms, without ever revealing too much about him. He can either be a serious, potentially murderously deadly character - or a rather minor one.
Faith is always a sacred and touchy subject matter, especially when writing for youth. I'd love to find more daring books like this one, presenting views of different types of religious characters. I found that not only was this novel touching, but it also gave me an appreciation of accepting people's inherent differences, especially as it relates to personal belief systems. Rylant proves herself to be a sensitive and thoughtful writer who can think out of the box in presenting a potentially controversial theme in a way that is inviting rather than merely subversive.