19 April 2010 WOODS RUNNER by Gary Paulsen, Wendy Lamb/Random House, January 2010, 176p. ISBN: 978-0-385-73884-2 

"It's the hammer of justice

It's the bell of freedom

It's the song about love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land"

--  Pete Seeger and Lee Hays (1949)

1.1965 - 1955 = 10 years

1965 - 1776 = 189 years

10/189 = .0529 = 5.3%

2. 2010 - 1955 = 55 years

2010 - 1776 = 234 years

55/234 = .235 = 23.5%

3.  1955 - 1776 = 179 years

x/(179 + x) = 1/3

3x = 179 + x

2x = 179x = 89.5 years

In the past year, I've had the good fortune to have located and begun a running correspondence with Al Schryver.  (Thanks, Google!)  Al, who is the same age as my father, was my favorite teacher as a child.  I was in an extended school year program in Commack, Long Island, when Al was my fifth grade teacher during the 1965-1966 school year.  (For those of you old enough to remember back then, it was the school year marked at the beginning by the theater release of the movie Help! and, at the end, by the release of the Lovin' Spoonful single "Summer in the City.")

I was a stellar math student back when Al was my teacher.  I still remember much of what I learned that year.  It was also a year for learning about United States history.

As depicted in problem 1 (above), I calculate that in 1965 I was ten (years old), the United States was 189 (using the Declaration of Independence as the starting date), and that I'd then lived through 5.3% of United States history.  When I was ten, the characters I studied from the beginnings of the nation seemed to have lived an unimaginably long time ago, as if the country had been around just short of forever.

As depicted in problem 2 (above), I calculate that today I am 55, the United States is 234, and that I have now lived through nearly a quarter of the history of the United States.

By age fifty-five, I have a long track record.  I have done some amazing things.  I have done some amazingly stupid things.  Some love me and some hate me; some like to hear what I say and others think I'm full of crap.  I keep working hard, keep trying to look inward, and I keep thinking that this is it -- I'm finally getting it together.  (No doubt, I'll be saying the same thing next year, too.)

The United States is based upon ideas and ideals that go back hundreds and thousands of years, but the United States is made up of people like you and me.  The country has had many opportunities to screw up over its 234 years and counting, and has often taken full advantage of these opportunities.  Of course, the functioning of the country logically can not be much better than the functioning of the people who constitute its population and put those ideas and ideals into practice on a daily basis. 

When I was young, I was quick to criticize the amazingly stupid things for which this country has been responsible, both domestically and internationally.  Now that I've had fifty-five years to screw up -- and have, myself, regularly taken advantage of many opportunities to do so -- I have learned to be somewhat more forgiving, both of myself and of my country.  I've tried to make amends where possible.  And (looking at who is now President), it feels like the country occasionally tries to do the same.

But all of this potential growth -- whether I am talking about myself or my country -- is very dependent upon a memory of and a good understanding of where one has come from and what one has been through. 

Gary Paulsen's WOODS RUNNER is a book that I would have loved when I was in Al Schryver's fifth grade class.  It is the perilous story of thirteen year-old Samuel who is out hunting on the day that the American Revolution comes to his part of the world (an isolated homestead in colonial Pennsylvania).  Samuel returns home to find that his family's homestead (and those of all the neighbors) have been burned to the ground, and deduces that his parents have been taken away, prisoners of the Redcoats.  (Fortunately, as we later come to learn, it was Redcoats rather than Hessians who were responsible in this particular instance.)  The story follows Samuel as he narrowly escapes death and finds himself using his rifle to take a human life as he seeks to harness all of his knowledge, wits, and resources, in order to locate and liberate his parents from their captors.   

"War Orphans

"Children orphaned by war, as countless were during the Revolutionary War, suffer from nightmares and sleeping problems, headaches, stomachaches, anger, irritability and anxiety.  Severely traumatized children may become withdrawn, appearing numb and unresponsive and sometimes becoming mute.  When the danger and devastation end, children can show remarkable resilience and recovery if they are in a safe and stable environment where they are cared for and nurtured. 

"After the Revolutionary War, however, many orphans, if they were not taken in by other family members, grew up in institutions.  Formal adoptions were very rare."

Earlier this year, I gushed about the pairing of poetry and prose in Joyce Sidman's sure-to-be-an-award winning picture book, UBIQUITOUS.  I am equally fond of the manner in which Gary Paulsen intersperses bits of factual background information between his chapters.  The "interruptions" are but a couple of hundred words each, and each is focused on interesting topics that you don't find in the history textbooks.

Getting back to the math, problem 3 is the sort of algebra equation that I learned to set up and solve when I was Al's student.  In this case, I was curious to know how old I will need to be in order to have lived through one-third of the history of the United States.  I calculate that will be the case when I am 89.5 in the year 2044.

"'I feel guilty, though,' Samuel's father whispered.  'So many men in that shed, in other sheds.  Starving.  And I get food.'"'It is the way of it,' Abner put in from the darkness, 'of war.  Some get, some don't, some live, some...don't,  It's the way of it.'"

While it may be focused on hostilities from hundreds of years ago, today's young readers will find WOODS RUNNER a powerful depiction of what war is like on an intensely personal level.  As Paulsen notes in his Afterword,

"Some of the dreadful nuts and bolts of battle, the real and horrible truths, are frequently overlooked because other parts are more dramatic and appealing.  There is a tendency  to clean up the tales of war to make them more palatable, focusing on rousing stories of heroism and stirring examples of patriotism, all clean, pristine, antiseptic."

WOODS RUNNER, like the real story of my beloved country, is a messy story. 

It is one that I will be doing my best to bring to the attention of the next generation who will one day be making our collective history -- hopefully, in a world without wars.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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