GARY PAULSEN

When sixty-five erasers go missing, Principal Wagner enlists the help of the school's best problem solver and locator of lost items, twelve-year-old Lyle Williams, aka Mudshark.

Author Gary Paulsen relates tales from his youth in a small town in northwestern Minnesota in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as skiing behind a souped-up car and imitating daredevil Evel Knievel.

In the Old Days There Were Songs Something is bothering Russel Susskit. He hates waking up to the sound of his father's coughing, the smell of diesel oil, the noise of snow machines starting up. Only Oogruk, the shaman who owns the last team of dogs in the village, understands Russel's longing for the old ways and the songs that celebrated them. But Oogruk cannot give Russel the answers he seeks; the old man can only prepare him for what he must do...

Fourteen-year-old John comes of age and gains self-reliance during the summer he spends up in the Wyoming mountains tending his father's herd of sheep

A fourteen-year-old boy who has been neglected by irresponsible parents spends a wonderful summer on a farm where his grandmother cooks for two elderly brothers.

"Deep in the woods, in a rustic cabin, lives an old man and the boy he's raised as his own. This sage old man has taught the boy the power of nature and how to live in it, and more importantly, to respect it. In Fishbone's Song, this boy reminisces about the magic of the man who raised him and the tales that he used to tell--all true, but different each time"--

Two boys, separated by time and different cultures, forge a mystical connection when fifteen-year-old Brennan Cole finds the skull of Coyote Runs, an Indian boy killed on his first raid, and becomes obsessed with returning it to a sacred place

Justin McCallister's happiness at his aunt and uncle's sheep ranch is interrupted by a destructive grizzly bear that injures the farm animals, so Justin decides to take matters into his own hands.

When Jeremy and Jason are left to run the family skiing business, strange things begin to happen, starting with a fire in the snowmobile garage.