• Age: 9 to 12
• Grade: 4 to 7
• Reading age: 9 to 12

Willa has never known her father. In fact, her mother has refused to tell the eight-year-old anything at all about him. Willa dreams about what he might look like and who he might be. She often asks herself why her hair, which is "afro-crinkly", and her skin, which is dark, are so different from her mother’s brown hair and pale skin. A substitute teacher’s request that the class draw pictures of their dads for a Father’s Day card launches Willa on an odyssey to discover the truth. Her head filled with fantasies of kings and princesses, Willa gathers the clues and, with the help of her good friend Marina, begins the alternately amusing and touching search for her father.

Holly Haggarty was born in 1960 in Midland, Ontario. She grew up in Toronto, fifth in a family of ten children and attended Loretto College School. In a wonderful, magical moment, when she started grade one, she discovered she knew how to read. She spent the rest of her childhood immersed (whenever possible) in books, her preference being storybooks. Stories provided obvious material to help her with her everyday childhood chore of caring for younger siblings. Her storytelling talents led her to take on part-time jobs which offered more opportunities for storytelling: babysitter, camp counsellor, waitress, host at the Ontario Science Centre, drama teacher, rat catcher... Holly graduated three times from the University of Ottawa, after having read thousands of books, some in old English, some en français, some largely in Latin. Finally she realized that storybooks in any language were still what appealed to her most and what she wanted to build her career around. So she became a mother, teacher, storyteller, writer. Holly Haggarty has published poems and articles in arts magazines and educational journals. Dream Dad was her first novel for children and was followed by Summer Dragons in 2007.

Holly Haggarty's profile page