Reason, the Only Oracle of Man, Or, a Compendious System of Natural Religion Book

How Angel Peterson Got His Name is one of many Gary Paulsen memoirs. Woodsong, My Life in Dog Years, and Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers are only three of the author's books about his own life that are considered among his finest works. Unlike most Paulsen memoirs, though, How Angel Peterson Got His Name deals exclusively in adventures that befell the author as a preteen and early adolescent, an age when he and his friends spent much of their time trying to see who could pull off the craziest stunt without dying. This fearless attitude has led to great breakthroughs in history...as well as more epic failures than one can enumerate. The book begins with Carl Peterson, a kid Paulsen knew growing up in icy northern Minnesota of the 1940s and '50s. After watching a newsreel about a man breaking the world speed record on skis—seventy-four miles per hour—Carl gets the idea to break that mark himself. All he needs is a wide open area, some help to hook himself to the bumper of an automobile, and an older friend willing to drive it with Carl hanging off the back. Carl, Paulsen, and their friends convince a local teen named Archie Swenson to drive, and amazingly, the attempt at the record goes according to plan...until it hits a potentially deadly snag. But how did Carl Peterson come to be known as "Angel"? The reveal is on the story's last page.

The Miracle of Flight is our second reminiscence, about another of Paulsen's friends at that age, Emil (pronounced "Eee-mull"). Emil is tightfisted with a dollar, but invests a large amount of cash to buy a target kite from the army surplus store. The massive apparatus is too big to fly by himself, but with the guys helping, Emil gets it off the ground early one summer day. Unfortunately, an unruly wind rips the kite out of their hands, with only Emil left hanging on. The kite carries him eighty feet in the air and higher, over barns and treetops, before sinking low enough for him to let go and abandon the ride. Every other boy in their group of friends let go immediately, but Emil couldn't bring himself to part ways with the expensive kite. Orvis Orvisen and the Crash and Bash is next, in which we meet a regrettably named kid with a debilitating fear of talking to girls. Several anecdotes illustrate Orvis's offbeat way of thinking, from his method of "bullying" himself to his propensity for daredevil stunts. All of Paulsen's friends have the latter tendency, but Orvis's ability to ignore common sense when he really wants to is in a class by itself.

We return to the subject of the opposite sex in Girls, and the Circle of Death. Paulsen and Orvis have shared an inability to speak with girls since childhood, but adolescence exacerbates the problem. Paulsen recalls his own first date, with a girl named Eileen. Knowing he'd never work up the nerve to ask her personally, he uses back channels to propose the date, and miraculously, Eileen accepts. Paulsen is too overwhelmed that evening to make anything but a weird impression on her, but at least his first date is behind him. Orvis deals with his own terminal shyness toward girls by upping the ante on his dangerous stunts, risking his life if he thinks it might impress them. That's how he winds up wrestling a bear named Bruno at the county fair. Fairs in those days featured bizarre attractions—if you want more on that, read the author's Tiltawhirl John or The Beet Fields—and one of these attractions is the Circle of Death. A trained bear—Bruno—will wrestle any customer who pays twenty-five cents. If they stay in the pit with him for one minute, they earns twenty-five dollars. Orvis isn't the most likely person to outlast Bruno, but a bit of half-formed strategy and a young female audience spur him to accomplish what none of the county's brawny farmhands could. Not every ill-advised stunt ends in disaster. The final chapter of this book is a hodgepodge of quick recollections from the author's youth: hitching fast rides by grabbing the back of a car on a skateboard, jumping a bike through a fiery hoop, and curling up inside a box filled with lit firecrackers. There's even a story about his cousin Harris, the title character from Paulsen's Harris and Me, when Paulsen is ten and Harris only eight. You'd best keep an eye out for wasp nests when bungee jumping from the second floor of a barn. Many of the tricks Paulsen and his friends tried as kids were foolish, bordering on psychotic, but the spirit of adventure remained part of him into adulthood. It led to his most captivating personal stories.

In contrast to some of Gary Paulsen's memoirs, humor trumps emotion in How Angel Peterson Got His Name. There's nothing here equivalent to the pathos of Paulsen's interactions with Storm or Cookie, two of his favorite sled dogs. I had fun, however, going back in time to an era when growing up was a different experience. Paulsen's friends were as memorable as any of his fictional characters. I'd probably rate How Angel Peterson Got His Name two and a half stars, and if you're a fan of the author's comedy, you shouldn't miss this book. It's some of his funniest material.