Polly Horvath at Ballard Library

Author Polly Horvath reads her new book NORTHWARD TO THE MOON on Thursday, March 4 at 6:30 p.m., in the Ballard Public Library.

Secret Garden Books is sponsoring, and says this: "Polly Horvath is one of the most highly acclaimed children’s book authors writing today. Among her many books are Everything on a Waffle (Newbery Honor Book), and The Trolls (National Book Award Finalist), and My One Hundred Adventures. Her books have been chosen by Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post as Best Books of the Year, and by Booklist and Kirkus Reviews as Editors’ Choices. She has won numerous Parents’ Choice Awards in addition to other accolades and honors. Polly lives in British Columbia with her family.

Jane, the beloved character readers fell in love with in My One Hundred Adventures, returns in Northward to the Moon, its companion novel. Combine a National Book Award–winning author’s indelible poetic writing style and a character that feels so real she might walk into the room, and you have a literary classic in the making.

The story picks up after readers have left Jane’s sleepy beachside home in Massachusetts for the icy fields of Saskatchewan. Jane’s stepfather Ned’s position as a French teacher ties them to this cold new climate, but when it’s discovered that Ned doesn’t speak a lick of French, Jane’s free-spirited family—including her younger sister, Maya; her little brothers, Max and Hershel; and her poet mother—must forge a new path. As readers learned in My One Hundred Adventures, when thirteen-year-old Jane hopes for excitement, the unexpected has a way of finding her. A phone call from Ned’s dying, elderly friend, Mary, sets off a string of events that bring Jane’s family on an endless trek that seems to take them Northward to the Moon. "