About

About Krystyna Poray Goddu

Krystyna Poray Goddu is the author of the middle-grade biography Becoming Emily: The Life of Emily Dickinson, the picture-book biography of celebrated ballerina Alicia Markova, An Unlikely Ballerina (Kar-Ben Publishing, 2018), the award-winning middle-grade biography A Girl Called Vincent: The Life of Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (Chicago Review Press, 2016), the middle-grade collective biography Dollmakers and Their Stories: Women Who Changed the World of Play (Henry Holt, 2004), and co-author (with Krystyna Mihulka) of Krysia: A Polish Girl's Stolen Childhood During World War II/A Memoir (Chicago Review Press, 2017), Young Readers, 2004), She has also written three nonfiction illustrated books for adults: R. John Wright: The Art of Toys (Reverie Publishing, 2004); A Celebration of Steiff: Timeless Toys for Today (Portfolio Press, 1997); and (co-author, with Wendy Lavitt) The Doll by Contemporary Artists (Abbeville Press, 1995), as well as numerous nonfiction books for the educational market, which have been published by Capstone Publishers, Lerner Books, Black Rabbit Books and Bearport Publishing.

A member of the Authors Guild and of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), she has published her writing for children in American Girl magazine. Her essays and reviews of children’s books have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and the (now defunct) Riverbank Review of Books for Young Readers and she has been a writer and regular reviewer of children’s books for Publishers Weekly since 2008.

She holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Brown University.

Other Works

  • An Unlikely Ballerina

    2018
  • Krysia: A Polish Girl's Stolen Childhood During World War II/A Memoir

    2017
  • A Girl Called Vincent: The Life of Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay

    2016
  • Dollmakers and Their Stories: Women Who Changed the World of Play

    2004

Awards and Recognition

  • SCBWI 2017 Golden Kite Honor Book for Nonfiction
  • Junior Library Guild Selection