Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I liked this book. Paulsen removes some of the hero-worship and whitewash we usually get in depictions of our Revolution, and adds a good bit of gritty realism. Granted all the bad deeds are done by the British and rather pointedly, the Hessians, so it's still pretty one-sided, but it's a more realistic view of the war than some others I've read. I'm undecided about the little non-fiction explanations sprinkled through the book. On one hand they are informative, but on the other, a writer as skilled as Paulsen should be able to fold that information into the story without breaking into it with textbook excerpts. The plot was very spare, covering only a few days, so perhaps he didn't want to clutter it up too much with those details. Still, the author shows considerable skill by making the characters like-able and well rounded in the limited time of the story.



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