Give Me Back My Dad!

In Fall 2010, Scholastic Canada launched a promotion that allowed young readers to help select the story by Robert Munsch to be published as his 30th book with Scholastic Canada. After close to 170,000 votes tallied, the fans have spoken — here are the details of the winning story:Cheryl and her dad go ice fishing, but it turns out that the fish are pretty smart. They are trying to catch the people right back! In the end, Cheryl and her father bring home something really good . . . and it's not a fish at all!This story was inspired by a young girl in Rigolet, Labrador. Twenty years ago Robert Munsch went ice fishing with a girl named Cheryl and her father, and this story was born. He has performed it live for many years now, but it has never appeared in book form before. Scholastic Canada is proud to bring this wonderful, whimsical tale to young readers everywhere!

Telling stories is what Robert Munsch does — and loves best. From the first time he stood in front of a group of children as a student teacher at a nursery school in 1972, his jaunty, animated presentation grabbed hold of the imaginations of his listeners and he hasn't let go since.

Before he puts a story to paper, Munsch spends up to three years telling, revising and fine-tuning the tale in front of his rapt audiences. “I figured out once that the stories the kids kept requesting came to two percent of my total output,” he says. But once he discovered how to capture the spontaneity of his narratives in written form, he was on his way to being a successful and sought-after author.

Munsch has published dozens of books in both Canada and the United States. His first efforts, Mud Puddle and The Dark, were published in 1979 and the runaway bestseller Love You Forever was first published in 1986. All of his characters are believably spunky, stubborn and endearing children, while his story lines tend to challenge conventions and stereotypes.

Munsch describes his stories as “middle of the road taboo.” When he uses words like pee and underwear, “the kids go absolutely bananas.” As for the parents, “Eighty percent think it's really neat; the other twenty percent ask, 'How could you?'"

Robert Munsch lives in Ontario, Canada, and continues to perform his own tales — often without advance notice — for day care centers, schools, and libraries.