My wife and I were in the library to pick up books she had ordered when a book displayed on the top of a bookcase in the children’s section caught my attention. Gone to the Woods is Gary Paulsen’s autobiography which was written shortly before he died in 2021. It is about his early life, most of which is unbelievably horrible for those of us who were not neglected as children, didn’t have alcoholic parents, hadn’t run away a couple of times, and weren’t homeless.
His experiences help to explain the power and imagery of his writing. I frequently recommend Hatchet to boys who have been turned off to reading but now have the visual potential to read. My wish for them is that they will develop into readers who read for entertainment, for information, to stimulate thinking, and for escape.
Gary Paulsen describes the major turning point of his life in this book which was caused by a library and a librarian. While it is too long to put here in its entirety, it would also be totally inadequate for me to summarize it in my words. To really get the feeling of what happens, and how he has written about it, you need to read the book, but I hope that these excerpts are an adequate substitute.
He’d come to the end of the alley, and between two buildings, he’d seen the front of the library. Probably looked at it a hundred times without actually seeing it at all….
The library looked warm.
And it was blue cold outside…
He didn’t want to get noticed, just warm….
He looked up once when the ladies were talking and he saw the librarian looking at him. Not long and not directly. A sliding glance, her eyes over him and gone. He could tell this was not the first time the librarian had noticed him. He could tell from her look that she’d been watching him listen to the ladies.
This time though, he saw her watch him, and when she saw that he had seen her, she gave him a smile. A small one, same as her glance. Sliding look, brief smile and gone. He relaxed against the wall again….. Clear eyes glancing over him and gone.
Had they stayed on him, had her eyes caught and held him, he would have left the library and probably never come back…. Her eyes flicked and were gone so he felt safe enough to stay….
It all blended in. Life. The library. One overlapped the other until it was more a mix than a simple thing….
Now and then, he came into town to get bread. Salt. Cooking lard.
And go to the library.
It happened that way. Somehow, without thinking, the library became part of what he was, what he did. A safe place. Like the woods….
Eventually he moved from standing in front of the magazine rack reading to sitting at one of the tables, which only happened because he was hurt….
He hadn’t been there two, three minutes looking at some art in the magazine showing a man shooting a bow and arrow at an attacking bear – never happen that way – when he felt someone in back of him.
He looked up and saw the librarian.
Standing there smiling at him.
Warm smile.
But she was still a grown-up and she was still noticing him.
She would probably tell him to leave now. Just get out – people like you don’t belong here. Drop the warm smile and kick him out.
“Can I help you?”
That was what she said: Can I help you?
He looked up at her. Looked away. Let his eyes fall on the wood of the table. Solid oak. A tiny groove where somebody had scratched the wood with something sharp. Stupid thing to do. He took a breath and thought, Can you help me? God, lady, if you only knew….
He looked up a quick glance. Stunned that she was still smiling. Warm smile.
“Can I help you?… “Would you like me to pick one for you to get started?”…
He was looking at the book, which had a worn cloth backing, rubbed and rounded corners. Didn’t open it. Not yet. Felt the corners, the touch of it. Felt warm. The same way the librarian smiled. Not a threat. More like an invitation – like the book was almost calling him. Saying come on, follow me. He’d seen books before. Of course. But never one that seemed so …. so alive. Like it wanted to be his friend. Silly thought; how can a book be a friend? But the librarian had done the same thing, said follow me. Into this stack of books.
And for the first time in his life he truly wanted to know this book, know what was in it, how it was, and what he had to do to know what it was saying to him. Really wanted to know……..
Finally, one evening when he had finished the book, he took it back to the library…..
“Did you like it?” Smile. Same warm smile….
“The words made pictures in my brain. He wrote about jungles and I could see them. I’ve seen jungles, and when he talked about how green they were, I could see them again in my brain. And the ocean. So blue. And monkeys, but they’re mean. And pythons eat them. And mangoes just fall on the ground, you don’t need to climb to get them, and then the juice runs down your chin when you bite into them, and there were rotten bodies of dead enemy soldiers in the jungle, the real jungle that I saw, not the one he wrote about… “ …
She was listening. Actually listening to him… “Like the book opened my brain to let it see other word-pictures somehow.”
He heard her make a small sound – a soft but sudden breath. And he saw her lower lip quiver a tiny bit and she bit it with her front teeth to stop the quivering. Her eyes misted and he thought, God, she’s going to cry. But she didn’t. Not quite. Instead she nodded again, and in a soft voice, almost a whisper, she said:
“Isn’t that wonderful?”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could help to change a person’s life for the better? I wonder if she knew what she did.
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