o huigin, sean 1942-

PERSONAL: Born 1942, in Brampton, Canada.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Black Moss Press, 2450 Byng Rd., Windsor, Ontario, Canada M8W 3E8.

CAREER: Poet and writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Canada Council Children's Literature Prize, 1983, for The Ghost Horse of the Mounties.

WRITINGS:

Poe-Tree: A Simple Introduction to Experimental Poetry, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1978.

The Inks and the Pencils and the Looking Back, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1978.

The Trouble with Stitches, illustrated by Anthony LeBaron, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1981.

Scary Poems for Rotten Kids, illustrated by Anthony LeBaron, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1982.

Pickles, Street Dog of Windsor, illustrated by Phil McLeod, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1982.

Well, You Can Imagine (contains the essay "Poe-Tree"), illustrated by John Fraser, edited by Edward Pickersgill, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1983.

The Story's Dream, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1983.

The Ghost Horse of the Mounties, illustrated by Barry Moser, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1983, D. R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1991.

The Dinner Party, illustrated by Maureen Paxton, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1984.

Blink, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1984.

The Granny Poems (based on memoirs written by Anna Rosina Koch), Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1984.

Atmosfear, illustrated by Barbara Di Lella, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1985.

I'll Belly Your Button in a Minute, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1985.

The Nightmare Alphabet, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1987.

Pickles and the Dog Nappers, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1988.

Monsters He Mumbled, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1989.

King of the Birds, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1992.

A Dozen Million Spills and Other Disasters, illustrated by John Fraser, Black Moss Press (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), 1993.

ADAPTATIONS: Scary Poems for Rotten Kids, was adapted for laser optical disc, Discis Books (Buffalo, NY), 1993.

SIDELIGHTS: During the 1980s and early 1990s, Canadian poet and writer sean o huigin made a name for himself by writing popular children's poetry collections. The poet struck a cord with grade school children by writing about their concerns and interests in a humorous way. When he conducted numerous poetry readings and workshops at schools throughout North America, he was able to see firsthand the reactions his work elicited. Dealing with such inherently interesting topics as bodily functions, childhood fears, and mysterious phenomena, his work might easily get giggles and moans from children, while arousing the "gag reflex" of adults. His early essay Poe-Tree: A Simple Introduction to Experimental Poetry, based on work with students in Toronto schools, testifies to his interest in extending the boundaries of poetry for children and was dubbed "good fun" for students and teachers by Books in Canada contributor Lorne R. Hill. Stylistically, o huigin's poetry resembles that of e e cummings in its use of little or no punctuation and few capital letters.

The majority of o huigin's poems deal with dark topics lightened with humor. Written for middle-grade readers, Scary Poems for Rotten Kids depicts the various monsters that may inhabit a child's room and nightmares and, according to Barbara McGinn in School Library Journal, compares favorably in fun, originality, and fright factor to Nightmares by Jack Prelutsky. Canadian Children's Literature reviewer Lisa MacNaughton also praised the work, citing its versatility and calling it an "excellent entrance into the world of print and language." In a similar vein, o huigin wrote The Dinner Party, in which grotesque characters eat even more disgusting food. As if this collection were not frightening enough, o huigin followed it shortly with the cautionary tale in verse Atmosfear. In this work he personifies air pollution as a monster that would destroy the world. This poem was republished four years later in the ten-poem collection Monsters He Mumbled. In this companion volume to Scary Poems for Rotten Kids, o huigin presents an array of gruesome creatures.

The poet made a departure from his previous work with a couple of books about a stray dog named Pickles: Pickles, Street Dog of Windsor and Pickles and the Dog Nappers. In the first volume, a narrator tells in verse and prose of his various encounters with the savvy and personable black-and-white hound. While remarking that the book has a "thin story line," Canadian Materials reviewer Gudrun Wight nevertheless praised the work for being "sensitive and original." The subsequent book about Pickles contains a better developed plot, according to some reviewers. Joanne Robertson, for one, called it an "imaginative and entertaining yarn" in her Canadian Materials assessment.

While most of o huigin's poems are short, his most celebrated work is the 1983 narrative poem The Ghost Horse of the Mounties. In this piece, based on a real storm-caused stampede in 1874 of 250 horses used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a lost horse searches for his rider. They are finally reunited as ghosts, and the pair forever rides with new Mountie cadets. When this work won the Canada Council Children's Literature Prize, it became the first children's poetry book to do so.

As his essay on experimental poetry suggests, o huigin tried out new versification techniques, including how a poem appears on the page. For example, in Blink: A Strange Book for Children he tells of a young girl whose eyes each see something different, and the verse telling what she sees runs in parallel columns down the page, one for each eye. Though the format baffled some readers, who wondered how to read it aloud, a Quill and Quire reviewer found the comparison from one eye to the other "delightful" and predicted that teachers could use Blink as a springboard for lessons on a variety of scientific topics dealing with perception.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Children's Literature Review, Volume 75, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Books in Canada, March, 1979, Lorne R. Hill, review of Poe-Tree: A Simple Introduction to Experimental Poetry, p. 23; December, 1984, Mary Ainslie Smith, review of Blink, p. 12; November, 1985, Mary Ainslie Smith, review of Atmosfear, p. 37; October, 1988, Ray Filip, review of The Nightmare Alphabet, p. 10; March, 1994, Rhea Tregebov, review of A Dozen Million Spills and Other Disasters, p. 48.

Canadian Children's Literature, Number 42, 1986, reviews of Ghost Horse of the Mounties, Scary Poems for Rotten Kids, The Trouble with Stitches, and Well, You Can Imagine, p. 58; Number 42, 1986, Gwyneth Evans, "sean o huigin's Children's Verse," pp. 62-64; Numbers 57-58, 1990, Lisa MacNaughton, review of Scary Poems for Rotten Kids, pp. 111-113.

Canadian Materials, May, 1984, Gudrun Wight, review of Pickles, Street Dog of Windsor, p. 193; January, 1985, Fran Newman, review of Blink; March, 1985, Fran Newman, review of The Dinner Party, p. 87; January, 1986, Patricia Fry, review of Atmosfear, p. 31; March, 1986, Grace E. Funk, review of I'll Belly Your Button in a Minute! p. 86; May, 1987, Joanne Robertson, review of Pickles and the Dog Nappers; March, 1990, Gwen Maguire, review of Monsters He Mumbled; September, 1994, Theo Hersh, review of A Dozen Million Spills and Other Disasters.

Children's Book Review Service, September, 1991, Neldo Mohr, review of The Ghost Horse of the Mounties, p. 10.

Emergency Librarian, May, 1990, Joan McGrath, review of Monsters He Mumbled, pp. 58-59.

Horn Book Guide, fall, 1991, Bridget Bennett, review of The Ghost Horse of the Mounties, p. 319.

Quill and Quire, November, 1984, review of Blink, pp. 12-13; December, 1989, Fred Boer, review of Monsters He Mumbled, p. 22; February, 1994, Janet MacNaughton, review of A Dozen Million Spills and Other Disasters, p. 38.

School Library Journal, December, 1983, Barbara McGinn, review of Scary Poems for Rotten Kids, 68.