By MAHDI A. and JAMES D.

Watertown Splash staff reporters

     This year’s One School, One Book summer reading choice is “Touching Spirit Bear” by Ben Mikaelsen.

     Every student in the Watertown Middle School will have to read the book and fill out a packet that will be due the week of Sept. 10. If any student loses the packet or needs help, they can to to this link: http://wmssummerreading2012.blogspot.com.

     “Touching Spirit Bear” is kind of a story about the author's life, because when he  was a child he was bullied, just like in the book. He says he ended up being a bully, just like in the story.

     Ben lives in a log cabin near Bozeman, Mont.  For a long time, he had a unique pet: a bear! Buffy was a cub when he got him and he lived with Ben and his family until he died of old age in 2010.

     Something Ben realized about Buffy was that the bear would copy his emotions.  So if the Ben was happy, the bear would want to play, and if Ben was sad, the bear would also be sad.

     Ben recently spoke over the phone to reporters from the Watertown Splash and answered questions about “Touching Spirit Bear,” summer reading projects, and living with a bear. Here is that interview.

     (Note: Interview transcript edited for clarity.)

     WATERTOWN SPLASH: How much of “Touching Spirt Bear” is about you?

     BEN MIKAELSEN: The story is original, but I call it my emotional autobiography. At different times growing up, there was a time I was picked on a lot like Peter Driscal. I was raised down in Bolivia and I was always the kid with the different-colored skin because I had white skin and everybody down there had dark-colored skin, and so I was picked on a lot and so I was really able to identify with Peter Driscal. But then later on in high school, I started getting to be a bully and a juvenile delinquent because that was my way of surviving. So there was a time in my life when I became Cole Matthews. But then there came a time in my life when I discovered that life can be wonderful if you’re treated decent, and then I like to think I became Edwin and Garvey. And so, emotionally, it’s my own story, and the actual act of circle justice -- sometimes they call it restorative justice -- is really a real phenomenon being used. I kind of mixed those things, historical things with emotional accuracies of my own.

     SPLASH: The school has not as a whole read the book yet, so the names you were just mentioning, those are all characters in the book, correct?

     BEN: Correct. One of them is a boy who’s been bullied, one is a boy who is a bully, and then there’s two elders that are very wise and have a lot of input into their situation.

     SPLASH: What made you think up the characters?

     BEN: Kind of what I just said. They were myself at different times in my life.

     SPLASH: What’s the story about?

     BEN: It’s about a young boy that has such an anger problem that one day he hurts another boy in a fight at school and, because he’s 15 years old, for the first time he’s facing a jail sentence. His parole officer is a Native American. They have a program up in Alaska where sometimes they’ll take a kid and they’ll banish him to an island for a whole year, and so the banishment is kind of a quest. It allows the person a lot of time to look into themself and think, “Why am I being the way I am?” The whole notion of it is to heal, not to punish. So this boy is banished to an island and, of course, then the real adventure starts, because he gets mauled by a bear and it turns into a survival story.

     SPLASH: You yourself have history with a bear. Can you give a little background about yourself for the students reading this story?

     BEN: When I was going to college, I volunteered some of my time in Northern Minnesota with bear studies. So when I got out to Montana, I got a phone call once asking if I would be willing to raise a young bear that had been used for research, had its front claws taken out, and they were going to destroy it. So I agreed. And so for 27 years I raised a bear. We called him Buffy. He was the most incredible animal. And I’m sad to tell you, he died a year and a half ago of old age. But he was an old, old man. I guess in bear years, he was like a hundred-year-old person. But it was an incredible experience. He wasn’t tame in the sense that you’d think of a tame animal, but with me he was just wonderful, because he adopted me, he owned me. In his mind, he owned me. He would actually rub and rub and rub his scent on me if I had to be gone for more than a week. It was a neat experience.

     SPLASH: How do you feel about having 600-plus read your book this summer?

     BEN: It’s an honor. It’s an honor for me because I know a lot of kids don’t want to read -- there’s a lot of them that do, but there’s some that don’t. And I also know because of the way I was raised and not being sent to school until fourth grade, reading was always difficult for me. So I know for some students reading is difficult. But what is neat is to know that they’re still taking their time out of their day to read one of my books, and so my hope is that my book will never, ever, ever disappoint them.

     You know across the United States a lot my books have been used for all different kinds of purposes. Some have been summer reading programs. There’ve been a couple of whole-city read a book [programs and a] half-dozen cities have chosen my books for that. It’s really, really neat. It’s an honor for a book to be used that way. In fact, the province of Saskatchewan, up in Canada, if you can believe this, has used that book as one of their main reading novels, with a study guide, throughout the whole province last year. It’s crazy the number of people [who have read the book].

     I must add this: Richard Peck the writer, told me once. He said, “Ben, if you are lucky in your career, you’ll have one or two of your novels that become bigger than you.” And I asked him at the time, I said, “How will I know if that happens?” And he smiled, and he said, “Well, when they become bigger than you.”

     “Touching Spirit Bear” and also I have a book called “Petey” and both of those books just have had an incredible response, and almost weekly I’ve had to pinch myself when I hear of things like your summer reading program, because I never could have imagined that actually happening when I was writing the book.

     SPLASH: Why is the title “Touching Spirit Bear”?

     BEN: Well, the title is a little bit cryptic in the sense that how you treat the world is how the world treats you. You go into a grocery store and you’re really angry, and everybody in the grocery store seems angry; you go in a good mood, and you are saying hi to everybody and helping people push their carts, and everybody’s kind and happy to you. In the book, Cole Matthews starts out very angry and tries to kill the Spirit Bear, and it, in turn, tries to kill him and almost does. But, at the very end of the book, he comes in touch with himself, he starts to realize the reason the world is turned ugly is he’s been trying to control it and destroy it. And one day, he finally, finally realizes that there’s beauty, that he’s part of that circle of humanity and life. At the very, very end of the book -- there’s a beautiful white Spirit Bear that is standing close to him -- and he wants to just touch the beauty of it. He doesn’t want to destroy it, he just wants to touch it and the bear let’s him do it. And so I guess it’s partly the actual touching of the Spirit Bear, but it’s also means that he, for the first time, is in touch with his own self and is part of the circle.

     SPLASH: What is the “Spirit” in Spirit Bear?

     BEN: First off, the white/black bear does exist up in British Columbia. They call them Spirit Bears, so that comes from actual life. But it also refers a little to the spirt of the human being, Cole Matthews becomes in touch with himself, the Spirit Bear is kind to him, so “Touching Spirit Bear” has to do a little bit with getting in touch with himself.

     SPLASH: When you were a kid, did you have to read any summer reading books?

     BEN: No, because my background was a lot different than yours. I was born and raised down in Bolivia, down in South America, and I was never sent to school or home-schooled ’til fourth grade, and then I was sent away to a boarding school where if I didn’t do an assignment right, I’d get strapped. And so I was really poor in school. When I came to the United States of American in seventh grade, I could barely read a comic book, and so I was way behind everybody else in reading. It wasn’t until the very end of my seventh grade I read my very, very first what I considered a book, and that was a little kiddie book that was half full of pictures, but it was called “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” But, boy, I loved that book, and that was what got me started in reading. I wished we had a sumer reading program and that I could have been involved in it.

     SPLASH: Thank you very, very much for your time.

     BEN: Let me just say one more thing before I get off: One of the reasons I used this idea of “Touching Spirit Bear” was I noticed with my bear, if I ever went into the pen with him and I was silly, he was really silly. And if I ever went into the pen and I was real playful, he’d be playful. If I went in and I was sad, oh, he’d come up and put his old chin on my shoulder and he’s the saddest bear you ever saw. But if I went in with him and I was angry, he was dangerous. And that’s what made me realize that my bear was just like the world around me. How I treated my bear was how it treated me. How I treated the world was how it treated me. And so that’s where I came up with this whole idea of “Touching Spirit Bear” and coming in touch with yourself.

     (For information about Ben Mikaelsen, his books, and Buffy, go to http://www.benmikaelsen.com.)

--June 13, 2012--