Gary Paulsen - Liar, Liar: The Theory, Practice and Destructive Properties of Deception

Alidas Song The Amazing Life of Birds The Beet Fields
The Boy Who Owned the School
The Brian Books: The River, Brians Winter, Brians Return, and
Brians Hunt
Canyons Caught by the Sea: My Life on Boats
The Cookcamp The Crossing Danger on Midnight River
Dogsong Father Water, Mother Woods The Glass Caf
Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and
the Brian Books
Harris and Me Hatchet
The Haymeadow How Angel Peterson Got His Name
The Island Lawn Boy Lawn Boy Returns
The Legend of Bass Reeves Masters of Disaster
Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day
The Monument Mudshark My Life in Dog Years
Nightjohn The Night the White Deer Died
Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers
The Quilt The Rifle
Sarny: A Life Remembered The Schernoff Discoveries
Soldiers Heart The Time Hackers The Transall Saga
Tuckets Travels (The Tuckets West series, Books
One through Five)
The Voyage of the Frog The White Fox Chronicles
The Winter Room Woods Runner
Picture books, illustrated by Ruth Wright Paulsen
Canoe Days and Dogteam

is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor Books: The Winter Room, Hatchet, and Dogsong. He won the Margaret A. Edwards Award given by the ALA for his lifetime achievement in young adult literature. Among his Random House books are Masters of Disaster; Woods Runner; Lawn Boy; Lawn Boy Returns; Notes from the Dog; Mudshark; The Legend of Bass Reeves; The Amazing Life of Birds; The Time Hackers; Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day; The Quilt (a companion to Alidas Song and The Cookcamp); How Angel Peterson Got His Name; Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books; The Beet Fields; Soldiers Heart; Brians Return, Brians Winter, and Brians Hunt (companions to Hatchet); Father Water, Mother Woods; and five books about Francis Tuckets adventures in the Old West. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults. His wife, Ruth Wright Paulsen, is an artist who has illustrated several of his books. He divides his time between his home in Alaska, his ranch in New Mexico, and his sailboat on the Pacific Ocean. You can visit him on the Web at GaryPaulsen.com.

y midmorning Monday, I had Katie Knowles believing that I suffer from a terrible disease. One that modern medicine doesnt recognize, cant identify and is powerless to treat.

I told her that I have chronic, degenerative, relapsing-remitting inflammobetigoitis. Which doesnt exist. I culled symptoms of mono, plantar warts, shingles, borderline personality disorder and a bladder infection, as well as listing a bunch of side effects from some TV ads for drugs.

Even for me, this was a whopper.

But I had to come down with whatchamacallit so that I wouldnt have to team up with Katie for the working-with-a-partner project in social studies this semester.

Cannot. Deal. With. Katie.

Shes some sort of mechanized humanoid, made up of spare computer parts, all the leafy green vegetables that no one ever eats and thesaurus pages. Were only in eighth grade, but everyone knows shes already picked out her first three college choices, her probable major and potential minor and the focus of her eventual graduate studies. To Katie, middle school is a waste of time, so she takes more classes than she needs to and does extra credit the way the rest of us drink water. Shes probably got enough credits already to graduate from high school.

The Friday before, wed been assigned to be each others partner for our social studies independent study project: a ten-page paper and an oral presentation in which we would illuminate some aspect of our government relevant to todays young citizen.

Thanks, Mr. Crosby, way to narrow the scope.

We wouldnt have class for the next week so that we could go to the library or the computer lab to work on our projects. This was going to teach us about independence and self-determination. Or something like that; I wasnt really listening.

I really dig Mr. Crosby; hes pretty laid-back except when he starts talking about what he calls government pork, and then he gets all wild and upset. I must have irked him somehow to get assigned to Katie. My best friend, JonPaul, and our buddy Jay D., who are the biggest troublemakers this side of a prison riot, were project partners, and even the Bang Girls (I call them that because theyre BFFs who have identical haircuts with the exact same fringe hitting their eyeballs in a weird way that makes my eyes water if I look at them too long) had been paired. Before I could ask Crosby what Id done to set him off, hed announced, Once partners are assigned, there will be no switching.

I am not a guy who gives in easily, so I spent the weekend thinking of ways to convince Crosby to change his mind, and avoiding Katie, even though shed been calling, emailing, IM-ing and texting. It was only third period on Monday morning and already shed left a couple of notes at my locker and had tracked me in the hall between classes.

Kevin.

I flinched. Katie has one of those bossy yet whiny voices that make you want to stab pencils in your eardrums to make the noise stop. I turned and broke out a killer smile. I can always tell when its time to crank up the charisma.

Hey, Katie, I meant to I started, but she cut me off before I could come up with plausible and inoffensive reasons why Id ignored her all weekend.

It doesnt really matter. She flipped open her notebook and handed me a sheaf of papers. I utilized the time by getting started on the initial research. You can see that I brainstormed about a dozen ideas we could examine that I believe to be unique and ripe for exploration. Why dont you take the packet home, read everything over, and then let me know by this time tomorrow, if not sooner, what youve decided? Im okay with any choice you make, and we should, after all, be democratic about how this partnership functions, because of, you know, the class subject and all.

Uh yeah, right. I see that you, wow, you typed upwhats an abstract, again?

A brief summary and succinct explanation, the theoretical ideal, if you will, behind the project topic. She tapped her foot impatiently, probably wondering why I hadnt been writing abstracts since nursery school.

Sure, that was what I was going to guess. You did an abstract thingie for all twelve ideas?

Of courseshe pushed her glasses a little higher on her nosebecause that kind of organization and attention to detail will enable us to make the best possible choice among our options. Besides, Im sure I can put the seemingly superfluous work to good use in the form of extra-credit projects later in the year.

Uh-huh.

Like I said, why dont you take this home and

I cut her off. No, I dont need to do that; lets pick number, um, seven. Yeah, that looks like a great idea.

The analysis of data collected during the most recent national census about the underserved population and how they interact with and regard the government services structure, especially pertaining to the link between educational grants and future acts of public service?