Books with author Peter Goulden

Horse Drawn Yogurt is a book of stories about Peter Gould's decade on Total Loss Farm in Vermont. Peter moved to Vermont in the back to the land movement and turned all the living, eating, smoking, dancing, and loving, and gardening into fiction: his first novel Burnt Toast (Alfred A. Knopf, 1972) brought all that together. His second novel Write Naked (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009) won the National Green Earth Book Award for Young-Adult eco-fiction. Now, in Horse Drawn Yogurt, Gould has created a patchwork of true stories of farm life. In these stories you'll learn how locals and newcomers helped each other out in a pivotal moment of history, and how young people new to the land learned how to tend gardens and farms, while belonging to a national movement―against the Vietnam war and for peace and justice around the world. "This book is not a memoir," Gould says. "It's a comforter. I didn't throw all those old clothes away. I cut and pieced them and sewed them together. Now they keep me warm."

Sixteen-year-old Victor, a thoughtful loner who tries to live his life "under the radar," wants to test out the saying "You have to be naked to write." When he sneaks off with an old Royal typewriter to his uncle's cabin deep in the Vermont woods and strips off his clothes, he expects Thoreau-like solitude. What he gets is something else—both funny and, as his high school English teacher likes to say, "transformative." For he discovers a face in the window watching him—Rose Anna, a homeschooled free spirit with an antique fountain pen and a passion to save the planet. Their unexpected encounter marks the beginning of an inspired writing partnership—and a relationship as timeless and eager as the Vermont woods in spring. A strikingly original debut novel that introduces two storytellers with different kinds of tales: one—in Victor's unforgettable voice—a quirky, contemporary love story; the other—by Rose Anna—an ecological fantasy featuring a tiny heroic newt. Together, the teens explore the possibility of connections – to one another, the woods outside, and the world beyond.Write Naked is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Sixteen-year-old Victor, a thoughtful loner who tries to live his life “under the radar,” wants to test out the saying “You have to be naked to write.” When he sneaks off with an old Royal typewriter to his uncle’s cabin deep in the Vermont woods and strips off his clothes, he expects Thoreau-like solitude. What he gets is something else—both funny and, as his high school English teacher likes to say, “transformative.” For he discovers a face in the window watching him—Rose Anna, a homeschooled free spirit with an antique fountain pen and a passion to save the planet. Their unexpected encounter marks the beginning of an inspired writing partnership—and a relationship as timeless and eager as the Vermont woods in spring. A strikingly original debut novel that introduces two storytellers with different kinds of tales: one—in Victor’s unforgettable voice—a quirky, contemporary love story; the other—by Rose Anna—an ecological fantasy featuring a tiny heroic newt. Together, the teens explore the possibility of connections – to one another, the woods outside, and the world beyond.

The airport was dank and unfamiliar. A cold breeze had smacked Dean in the face as soon as he had emerged from Rio de Janeiro’s Antonio Carlos Jobim International. Dean observed a cute looking couple to his left, gaping indulgently into each other’s eyes. All Dean had on this continent was himself, a rucksack and a diary. It was the diary of his estranged father Jack who had disappeared when Dean was a child.Using memoirs from the diary and with the help of some new friends he meets in a Rio hostel Patrick, Zach and Greg, Dean traces the exact footprints of his father through Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. The boys have skirmishes with crocodiles, explore uninhabited islands and sleep under the stars on tranquil beaches in adventures that they will be able to tell their grandchildren. When political unrest takes heave in Bolivia, Dean and his friends discover that there is no exit; all the roads out are blocked. Three of his friends are taken captive by the Bolivian army under suspicion of espionage. Dean travels to the capital La Paz with Irishman Patrick, unearthing some startling truths about his father along the way, which have the potential to change the course of Bolivian history and topple some of the most prominent political figures in Bolivia. Dean starts to question whether he wants to unearth his father’s secretive past any further or whether his Dad Jack would be best left a distant memory.