Polly Horvath


Photo of Polly Horvath
Polly Horvath is the author of many books for young people, including Everything on a Waffle, The Pepins and Their Problems, The Canning Season and The Trolls. Her numerous awards include the Newbery Honor, the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, the Vicky Metcalf Award for Children's Literature, the Mr. Christie Award, the international White Raven, and the Young Adult Canadian Book of the Year.

Horvath grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She attended the Canadian College of Dance in Toronto and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York City. She has taught ballet, waitressed, done temporary typing, and tended babies, but while doing these things she has always also written. Now that her children are in school, she spends the whole day writing, unless she sneaks out to buy groceries, lured away from her desk by the thought of fresh Cheez Whiz. She lives on Vancouver Island with her husband and two daughters.

Author's Comment: When you tour people tell you odd quirky stories about the way your work has touched them. Somehow you don’t get these stories in fan mail. Once in Atlanta a woman told me her best friend was rooming with her at college and read The Canning Season. On the basis of that she quit school, moved to Maine and started an organic farm. I loved that story. But I wouldn’t have ever known had I not been on tour.

Another time I did a reading in Flagstaff, Arizona to an audience of 11 year old girls and one middle-aged man in work clothes and oily work boots. He had a scrunched up copy of An Occasional Cow in his hands. At the signing he came up and told me that this book had gotten him through all the bad times in his life. I was perplexed because An Occasional Cow is a light-hearted romp. I couldn’t imagine it getting anyone through anything. But this is the book the man read through hard times. It made me realize that you touch people far away in ways you could never guess. I think of that whenever I get the urge to throw it all over and go to work at Walmart.

Nationality: American Canadian

Featured series by Polly Horvath


One Hundred Adventures - Age 9 & up
Coal Harbour - Age 10 & up