Her children are now married with children and living in Washington State.Īs you might expect from an author who writes about animals, Kehret is also a long-time volunteer for animal welfare causes, currently helping Left Behind K-9 Rescue and the Northwest Spay Neuter Center. She also likes to cheer for her favorite sports teams, bake, knit, and pump her old piano. When she isn’t writing, Kehret likes to read, do crossword and jigsaw puzzles, and play with her animals. She often sees deer and elk from her window, which Kehret views as better than watching TV. Sadly, after forty-eight happy years of marriage, Kehret lost her husband.Īccording to her FAQ, Kehret’s home is a log house on a ten-acre wildlife sanctuary near Mount Rainier National Park.

in their motorhome with their pets on board so that she could speak at schools, libraries, and children’s literature conferences. Since then she has published many popular books for young people.įor many years, Kehret and her husband traveled around the U.S. Her first book for kids was published in 1985. She also published short stories, articles, and two books for adults. The couple later moved to California, where they adopted two children.īefore she began writing books for children, Kehret wrote radio commercials and plays. Her autobiography won the Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, and the PEN Center USA West Award for Children’s Literature.Īfter attending the University of Minnesota for a year, she married Carl Kehret. Most of her main characters are around age twelve. Peguin reports that because Kehret can remember her experience with polio so vividly, she finds it easy to write in the viewpoint of a young person. Her experience of the illness changed Kehret’s life, as she describes in her memoir Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio. Fortunately, she made nearly a complete recovery. No one knows how she developed polio, but Kehret surmises in her FAQ that she probably got it from someone who has such a mild case that they were never diagnosed. Kehret had each of the three types of polio: spinal, respiratory, and the most severe kind, bulbar. Growing up in Minnesota, she had a happy life except for a bout in 1949 at age twelve with polio which paralyzed her from the neck down and hospitalized her for several months.

A long-time volunteer at The Humane Society, she often uses animals in her stories.Īs a child, Peg Kehret wanted to be either a writer or a veterinarian. She has won many state “young reader” or “children’s choice” awards. Peg Kehret’s novels for young people are regularly recommended by the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, and the Children’s Book Council.

Small steps book polio