The Winter Room is a young adult novel by American author Gary Paulsen. It is a realistic fiction story about logging and farming, narrated in the first person to two boys by their Norwegian uncle in the "winter room" of a farm in northern Minnesota, United States. Like many of Paulsen's works, it evokes a harsh rural environment using vivid imagery, and has elements of a coming of age tale.
The Winter Room received the 1990 Newbery Honor.
The Winter Room was well received by critics. Upon the novel's release, James A. Schmitz of The ALAN Review rated the novel as one of Paulsen's best.
While evoking the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ernest Hemingway, and Jim Harrison, Publishers Weekly proclaimed that "Newbery Award-winner Paulsen never disappoints, and proves his talent again in this remarkably good tale."
Kirkus Reviews called The Winter Room a "beautifully written evocation of a Minnesota farm", while noting that it's "more a prose poem than a novel".