Confessions

Hmm...well, okay...another confession. Until tonight I'd never read a book by Gary Paulsen. I guess I've always looked at the ones that he's really famous for like, Hatchet and Dogsong and The Rifle and The River and The Poison Ivy and The Frostbite and all those other adventure/coming of age stories and they never really interested me seeing as my idea of an afternoon outdoors in a long lunch at The Rainforest Cafe in the Mall of America. Today I found The Amazing Life of Birds: The Twenty-Day Puberty Journal of Duane Homer Leech and thought, "This is different! Sure, it mentions birds but it isn't called The Nest and it sounds kinda like a boy's version of Twelve so, why not!"
It's a tiny little book, not even 85 pages and so it was a super-fast read, needless to say. I liked it. I still don't know for sure what ELBOWS are, but it was cute and made me laugh out loud in a couple of places, which says a lot. I think tween girls might like to read it, too, just to find out that they aren't the only ones who have a hard time going through the whole puberty thing.
I really like it until the end, when, I guess in keeping with the whole man v. nature thing that Paulsen must like, the book totally jumps the shark. I guess if the whole book were over the top like the end is, it would have fit better, but for me the end made it a three star instead of a four on the ye old goodreads meter.
But Paulsen's from Minnesota and he did join the circus at age 14, so I need to give him another chance down the road.