Ben Mikaelsen - 1952
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Ben Mikaelsen was born in La Paz, Bolivia, a South American country in 1952. He had strange pets and learned a lot about the Bolivian culture in his time here. He has lived in Montana for 21 years. He began writing when he was 10 years old. He has been professionally writing for the past sixteen years. Writing is his only profession. Mikaelsen writes articles as well as books. He has been featured nationally on Jack Hannah's Animal Adventures as well as on German national television.
Mikaelsen is adventurous and active. He recently took a trip to the North Pole and barely made it back alive because the plane he was in was fighting strong head winds which slowed the plane down and it nearly ran out of gas. He also took a four-month road trip to the south tip of South America. Mikaelsen
is a renowned children's author, accomplished, and has won ten major awards including the International Reading Association Award and Western Writer's Golden Spur Award. He has also been a nominee for thirty-five other awards.
Mikaelsen has written five major books including Rescue Josh McGuire, Sparrow Hawk Red, Stranded, Countdown, and Petey. His most famous book, Rescue Josh McGuire was published in 1991 and won six of his ten total awards.
Ben Mikaelsen lives outside of Bozeman Montana. He is married but does not have any children. He does, however, have a 700-pound black bear named Buffy which is his pet. He and his wife adopted the bear because it had been in a research facility and had its claws cut off. Because the claws were removed, the bear could not return to the wild or go to a zoo. They built a special den for the bear and get donations of food to feed it.
Ben Mikaelsen is now coming out with a new book called Touching Spirit Bear which will hopefully live up to his other books. In a year or two, we should be seeing another new title from Ben Mikaelsen.
II. List Of Works
Petey
Sparrow Hawk Red
Rescue Josh McGuire
Stranded
Countdown
III. Mikaelsen on the Web
ben@benmikaelsen.comhttp://www.benmikaelsen.com
This essay was submitted by a student of Steve Gardiner, a teacher at Billings Senior High School in Billings, Montana.