'I said, 'For who?' and she said 'For me.' I would not be a writer. 'She said, 'You should write down some of your thought pictures,' which I called them,' Paulsen said.

The other place Paulsen sought refuge during those cold Minnesota winters was in the library, where a watchful librarian took notice of him and gave him a library card, and then books, and then a Scripto notebook and a number two pencil, to write down his thoughts. He reunited with his parents when he was 7 years old, and started running away shortly thereafter. Paulsen wrote fondly about his time with his aunt and uncle, but it was short-lived. There he learned how to catch and cook fish over a campfire, and use the smoke to keep the mosquitoes away at night - skills that characters in his later novels would use to survive. When he was 5 years old, Paulsen's mother put him on a train, alone, with nothing but a $5 bill and a suitcase, and sent him to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm in Northern Minnesota. Alone on the train with a five-dollar bill That's what the bartenders gave me a lot of,' he told NPR in an interview.

'She would take me to bars and have me sing,' he said. His father was off fighting in World War II his mother was an alcoholic, and her drinking and partying formed some of Paulsen's very first memories. In a memoir, Gone To The Woods - which came out earlier this year - Paulsen wrote about a difficult childhood. Paulsen was best known for those wilderness survival stories, though he wrote more than 200 books during his lifetime, and three of his novels, Hatchet, Dogsong and The Winter Room, were Newbery Honor books. Gary Paulsen, whose books taught generations of kids how to survive in the woods with only a hatchet, died Wednesday at the age of 82 his publisher said it was 'sudden' but did not give a cause.

Hatchet series in order