GARY PAULSEN (1939 - 2021) wrote nearly two hundred books for young people, including the Newbery Honor Books Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room.
“There are only a handful of indispensable dog books…Winterdance belongs among [those] classics…It is hard to find a page in this laconic book without an insight, hard to find a word that could be cut without loss…Winterdance is beautiful and is very funny and it’s about and dogs and their souls.”—Washington Post “Winterdance will be around long after most outdoor adventure books have been forgotten. What could have been an ordinary journal becomes instead a revelation.” –Minneapolis/St. Paul Star-Tribune “In the tradition of Jack London…[Paulsen’s] prose is spare and physical; at its best, it has the fluid simplicity of Hemingway…What’s most moving is his behavior at the end of the race; ‘I didn’t want to go in,’ he says. Armchair travelers will understand.” –Booklist “A breathtaking, heart-stopping, roller coaster ride that depicts the brutal reality of the Iditarod, the magnificent beauty of Alaska, and the unique, if not surreal, relationship that develops between man and dog.”—Nevada Weekly —