Gary Paulsen, celebrated children's author, dead at 82

Gary Paulsen, the acclaimed and prolific children's author who often drew upon his rural affinities and wide-ranging adventures for tales that included "Hatchet," "Brian's Winter" and "Dogsong," has died at age 82.

Author of more than 100 books, with sales topping 35 million, Paulsen was a three-time finalist for the John Newbery Medal for the year's best children's book and recipient in 1997 of the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement. "I can’t live in towns anymore. The last time I was up in Santa Fe, I wasn’t there 20 minutes before I brewed up, almost slugged a tourist on the steps of my wife’s gallery."

He was a Minnesota native who deeply identified with the outdoors, whether sailing on the Pacific Ocean, hiking in New Mexico or braving the cold of the Alaskan dogsled race, the Iditarod. For a time he lived in a cabin in rural Minnesota, where he finished his first novel "The Special War," and on a houseboat in the Pacific Ocean. He spent his latter years on a remote ranch in New Mexico, a bearded outdoorsman sometimes likened to Ernest Hemingway.