About the author
Barbara Garland Polikoff (1929–2022) wrote biographies and fictional works aimed at teenagers. Her first fictional work, Life’s a Funny Proposition, Horatio, about a boy whose father has died of lung cancer, was very well received, and had a Best Books Citation in the School Library Journal, 1992. Its sequel, Riding the Wind, centred on Angie, who was desperate to own the Arab mare Lila. This book wasn’t as well received as the first book, but still had favourable reviews.
Barbara Polikoff couldn’t, she said, remember a time when she wasn’t writing something. She taught English, but found she couldn’t reconcile the time she needed to do it well with her writing, so left. She worked as a volunteer in a Chicago elementary school, teaching writing. “At first, I taught because I loved it, but during the last decade an urgency has been added to that love and now I teach because I want to help inner city children gain the full and exciting use of language.”
Barbara Garland Polikoff died in 2022.
Finding the book
The book is very easy to find in both hardback and paperback editions. It was not published in the UK.
Links and sources
Reviews of the books on Amazon
Biographical information on the author
Many thanks to Lisa Catz for the photograph.
Bibliography (horse books only)
Riding the Wind
Henry Holt, New York, 1995, 131 pp
Puffin, (USA) 1967
The sequel to Life’s a Funny Proposition, Horatio, this story is told by Angie. She dreams of owning an Arabian horse called Lila. The horse is injured by a newcomer to the town, and Angie finds this desperately hard to forgive.
