The problem was I always had wonderful ideas and stories bouncing around in my head. After all the other kids fell asleep, I’d lie awake in the dark, grinning at the ceiling. And so I started taking a piece of paper with me to bed at night. I hid a flashlight under my pillow, and every night after the headmaster shut the lights out, I pulled the covers over my head and knelt with the flashlight in my mouth. With paper and pencil in front of me, I continued writing. It was there, filling those blank pages under the covers, afraid of a strapping by the headmaster, that I really began to discover the magic that would someday make me a published author.
You have mentioned before that, like Cole, you were a bully in high school. How did that happen?
For me, becoming a bully was my way of surviving.
I understand you are raising a bear. Can you tell us a little bit about him?
When I was at college, I helped work on bear studies in northern Minnesota. After moving to Montana, I received a phone call asking if I would be willing to raise a little cub that had been used in a research facility. If I couldn’t take him, they would have to kill him. I agreed to take care of him and began raising my bear, Buffy. I didn’t have any special expertise. Even the books I read on bears didn’t prepare me for raising one.
I do need to say this—people should never raise wild animals. They belong in the wild. But Buffy was a special circumstance. I’ve raised him for more than twenty-five years now, and he is the most extraordinary creature I have ever met. He weighed barely twenty pounds when he first came to my home. Now he weighs nearly seven hundred fifty pounds. We are very close, and he trusts me so much that he will hold out his paw and allow me to cut open an abscessed toe with a razor blade, all while growling and biting on his other paw. That is a lot of trust. I’m not sure my sisters trust me that much.
One important thing: I have noticed that when I visit Buffy each day, he mimics my mood. If I’m playful, he’s playful. If I’m sad, he puts his big old nose on my shoulder. If I’m angry, he’s dangerous. I want my books to reveal that how we treat the world is most often how the world treats us.
So, why did you write Touching Spirit Bear?
I’ve spent a lifetime catching up on my education. I’ve also spent a lifetime dealing with the emotions and anger brought on by my early years. I always tell students that I made up the story Touching Spirit Bear, but the book was my own emotional autobiography. At one point in my life I was Peter Driscal, at another point, Cole Matthews. When I discovered life can be wonderful if you treat it wonderfully, I became like Edwin and Garvey.
I must also add this. When I heard about Columbine—where two boys in Colorado who were bullied in school killed many of their classmates—I knew I needed to write Touching Spirit Bear.
Okay, so why did you write Ghost of Spirit Bear?
I knew when I finished Touching Spirit Bear, the story wasn’t finished. I always imagined what Cole and Peter might do when they returned to the big city. The real test of survival in my mind would take place once they came back to reality. They might have changed on the island, but now they were coming back to a big inner-city high school where things hadn’t changed. There were still bullies, gangs, and drugs. Now came the real test of whether Cole and Peter had changed in their hearts.
And they had.
I also knew from the beginning that they would learn new lessons to build on their earlier ones. That is how life is. We are always learning.
What advice would you have for students who want to become writers?
Each year I speak to students in different settings all across the country. Some of the best writers are in juvenile detention centers, where the kids truly have stories to tell. Their technical skills are poor, but their stories are powerful and filled with feelings. This is something that students should always remember. Write stories that have feelings. If you don’t make the reader care, it doesn’t matter if the words are spelled correctly.
Are there any final words you would like to share with your readers?
I am simply grateful that life has given me the written word. I can’t sing a note without scaring the dog. I can’t paint a picture of a cow pie, much less a sunset. But I did discover the power of words. I discovered that words allowed me to make magic. I could make people laugh and cry. I could make people think. For that gift, I will always be thankful.
That is what is so wonderful about reading and writing. We can discover our own potential. By doing what I wanted in life—following dreams and learning to believe in myself—each day has become truly remarkable. Students can discover the same lessons that I learned: Your life is the greatest story you will ever tell. We are all the authors of our lives.
GHOST OF SPIRIT BEAR is an adventure!
“Gripping and fast moving.”—KLIATT
“A highly satisfying resolution.”—ALA Booklist
And don’t miss the beginning of Cole’s adventures in TOUCHING SPIRIT BEAR!
“Mikaelsen’s portrayal of this angry, manipulative, damaged teen is dead on.”—School Library Journal
(starred review)
“Mikaelsen paints a realistic portrait of an unlikable young punk.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Cole’s solitary life on the island is just the ticket for Paulsen fans, who will appreciate the survival story.”
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“An excellent companion to Gary Paulsen’s HATCHET and Allan Eckert’s INCIDENT AT HAWK’S HILL.”—ALA Booklist
“[Cole’s story] will fascinate young and old, and have everyone waiting for the sequel.”—VOYA
About the Author
BEN MIKAELSEN is the winner of the International Reading Association Award and the Western Writers of America Spur Award. His novels RED MIDNIGHT, RESCUE JOSH MCGUIRE, SPARROW HAWK RED, STRANDED, COUNTDOWN, PETEY, and TREE GIRL have been nominated for and won many state reader’s choice awards, TOUCHING SPIRIT BEAR, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Book Sense Pick, has a large, enthusiastic, and ever-growing following. Ben lives near Bozeman, Montana, with his nearly 750-pound black bear, Buffy. You can visit him online at www.benmikaelsen.com.
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Also By Ben Mikaelsen
Red Midnight
Touching Spirit Bear
Tree Girl
Copyright
Ghost of Spirit Bear
Copyright © 2008 by Ben Mikaelsen
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03363-5
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mikaelsen, Ben.
Ghost of Spirit Bear / by Ben Mikaelsen.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: After a year in exile on an Alaskan island as punishment for severely beating a fellow student, Cole Matthews returns to school in Minneapolis having made peace with himself and his victim—but he finds that surviving the violence and hatred of high school is even harder than surviving in the wilderness.
ISBN 978-0-06-009009-8
[1. High schools—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Change (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. 5. Conduct of life—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M5926Gh 2008 2007036732
[Fie]—dc22 CIP
AC
Typography by Hilary Zarycky
10 11 12 13 14 CG/CW 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
1
First paperback edition, 2010
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Ben Mikaelsen, Ghost of Spirit Bear
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