Paulsen has written extensively about growing up in the Midwest.

Small towns and farms in Minnesota and Wisconsin are frequent settings for his novels. The Cookcamp, Harris and Me, Dancing Carl, and The Island all use these backdrops.

An important theme in these novels revolves around an adolescent protagonist who is coming of age through interaction with an adult. Sometimes a relative, sometimes a stranger, the influential adult is different or odd. Often the adult is a loner or an outcast.

When the protagonist is able to get beyond society's assumptions about the adult or even behind the adult's defenses, the central character finds an important lesson about life.

The lesson is that in work or in love, adulthood often exacts a steep price for the privilege of independence. Paulsen's protagonists discover that beyond youth's voyage through new pleasures and temporary anxieties lies the adult pilgrimage...