About this item
Why should girls miss out on the joy of adventure? They can jump off rocks, swing on ropes, and climb trees just as well as boys can. But girls often allow fear to stand in their way.In The Gutsy Girl, author Caroline Paul emboldens girls to seek out a life of exhilaration. Once a young scaredy-cat herself, Caroline decided that fear got in the way of the life she wanted--of excitement, confidence, self-reliance, friendship, and fun. She has since flown planes, rafted big rivers, climbed tall mountains, and fought fires as one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco. In The Gutsy Girl, she shares her greatest escapades as well as those of other girls and women from throughout history, and offers engaging activities such as confidence-building stances, creating a compass, positive self-talk, and using crickets to estimate outside temperatures.
About the Author
I grew up in New England, with an identical twin, a younger brother, and a menagerie of animals. I did some goofy things as an adolescent: I learned all the constellations in the Western Hemisphere; I tried to set the Guinness World Record for crawling; I built a boat out of milk cartons, then convinced my twin and two friends to join me on the river, then waded to shore with them when it broke up in the first rapid. These adventures and more are part of my latest book, The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure, written especially for 7-12 year-old girls. I graduated from Stanford University, where I studied Communications. At the time I had a vague idea that perhaps I would become a documentary filmmaker. Instead, in 1989, I became a San Francisco firefighter.I wrote about my thirteen and a half year career in Fighting Fire, an updated version of which came out in 2011. I'd tell you about those years, but really, you should just read the book. I will only say that being in a fire made me happy, and doing emergency medical work intrigued me. All of it made me a better person.The most remote place I've been is Siberia, where I saw a Unidentified Flying Object that may or may not have been the Soviet military. The highest place I've been was on a mountain bike in the Bolivian Alps back when mountain bikes were scarce and 15,000 feet didn't hurt as much as it would now. The most isolated I've ever felt was in a blizzard on the mountain of Denali, where we had to stay in the tent and pee into a Gatorade bottle.My novel East Wind, Rain came out in 2006. It is based closely on the little known but true story some call "the battle of Niihau," that begins when a Japanese pilot who has just attacked Pearl Harbor is forced to crash land on an isolated Hawaiian island. The inhabitants there have no communication with the outside world, and are puzzled by his sudden, dramatic arrival. The book follows the next seven days, as the seemingly mysterious event divides the villagers and disrupts a once peaceful paradise. "When it's over, you don't want to leave," said the New York Times. In 2013 my third book, Lost Cat, A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology, was published. It's about my obsessive to search to figure out where my cat journeyed when I was not around and entailed GPS tracking, video, psychics and animal communicators. Despite the title, it's really about how lost humans can become, and the animals that help them regain their bearings. Lost Cat was named a Best Book by Jezebel and by the influential website Brainpickings. For years I was mistaken for my identical twin, Alexandra Paul. That would ordinarily be unremarkable, except that Alexandra is an actress with a long and storied career, and her face (and thus mine) is recognized all over the world. The ensuing confusion, absurdity, and hilarity is captured in the essay Almost Her:The Strange Dilemma of Being Ne
