Dancing Carl

By Gary Paulsen

Subjects: Skating, fiction, Minnesota, fiction, Young adult fiction, Ice skating, Skating, Eccentrics and eccentricities, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Interpersonal relations, Hockey, Fiction, Children's fiction, Juvenile fiction, Family life

Description: In the winter, life in McKinley, Minnesota, revolves around the rinks, where kids play hockey and grown-ups skate to scratchy phonograph records. Then, the year Marsh and his best friend, Willy, are twelve, Carl appears at the rink, wearing a battered, old leather flight jacket and doing a strange dance that is both beautiful and disturbing to watch. It is Marsh and Willy who discover the terrible secret behind Carl's dance, a secret that threatens to destroy him. But a small miracle occurs, and Carl's dance becomes a fragile and tentative expression of hope and the healing power of love.