Helen Frost author page

Helen Frost biography

Helen Frost is an American poet and author of books for children and young adults. She studied Elementary Education with a concentration in English at Syracuse University and later earned a master’s degree in English from Indiana University. Her professional background includes teaching elementary school in the United States and Scotland, as well as teaching writing to children and young people.

Frost has written eleven novels-in-poems. Her first, Keesha’s House, was published by Frances Foster Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in 2003 and was named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book in 2004. Her subsequent verse novels include Spinning Through the Universe, later published in paperback as Room 214: A Year in Poems, The Braid, Diamond Willow, Crossing Stones, Hidden, Salt, Applesauce Weather, When My Sister Started Kissing, Blue Daisy and All He Knew.

Her work also includes picture books about the natural world. Monarch and Milkweed, illustrated by Leonid Gore, was published by Atheneum. Frost has collaborated with photographer Rick Lieder on a series of picture books beginning with Step Gently Out and followed by Sweep Up the Sun, Among a Thousand Fireflies, Wake Up!, Hello, I’m Here! and Wait-and-See.

Their seventh collaboration, The Mighty Pollinators, was published by Candlewick Press in 2024 and introduces children to animals that carry pollen between flowers, including bees, butterflies, moths and bats.