From the living legend and award-winning author of Hatchet comes a laugh-out-loud middle-grade romp about a boy, his free-thinking dad, and the puppy-training pamphlet that turns their summer upside down.
 
Twelve-year-old Carl is fed up with his father's single-minded pursuit of an off-the-grid existence. His dad may be brilliant, but dumpster-diving for food, scouring through trash for salvageable junk, and wearing clothes fully sourced from garage sales is getting old. Increasingly worried by what schoolmates and a certain girl at his new school might think of his circumstances—and encouraged by his off-kilter best friend—Carl adopts the principles set forth in a puppy-training pamphlet to “retrain” his dad’s mindset...a crackpot experiment that produces some very unintentional results. This is a fierce and funny novel about family and untangling some of the ties that bind from middle-grade master Gary Paulsen.
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Gary Paulsen (1939–2021) wrote more than two hundred books for children and adults, including the recent acclaimed memoir Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood, and the survival adventure Northwind. Three of his novels—Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room—were Newbery Honor books. In 1997, he received the ALA’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for his contribution to young adult literature. His books have sold over 35 million copies around the world. garypaulsenauthor.com