Glenn Balch - (1902-1989)
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Advanced English 3
Emmett High School, Emmett, Idaho.
I. Personal and Professional Biography
Animals, primarily horses and dogs, and the outdoors fascinated Glenn Balch. He grew up with animals in Texas, but his love for nature made him move to Idaho, "to the land of high mountains and silver streams" (Junior 8), where he found his career as a writer. Glenn Balch is an Idaho author who wrote many novels that reflect his love for animals, especially horses, and nature.
Already during his early childhood, Glenn Balch loved to be around horses. He was born in Venus, Texas, on December 11, 1902, the son of Glenn Olin and Edith (Garrison) Balch. Glenn Balch rode as long as he could remember. In "Writer from the Range" Balch said: "Growing up in Texas you start with a stick horse, graduate to calves, then to ponies and finally horses." But his love for animals also brought him into a lot of trouble. Before he even turned six years of age, he crashed, while driving a horse harnessed to a buggy, fell off a merry-go-round he had ridden in order to touch one of the horses, and got bitten by a prairie dog (Something 8; Contemporary 15).
Besides being outside with horses and his dog, he was an avid reader. He loved to read books about animals like Black Beauty, and Dance Back the Buffalo. His grandparents owned a bookstore in Cleveland, Texas, and when Balch and his mother went to visit them, he sometimes got a new book of the series Frontier Boys. He said, "[. . .] Whenever I got a new book, I would start at the first of the series and read them all again" (Hansen). In Something About the Author Glenn Balch describes the times while he was reading: "I spent hours and hours with books and would have loved to live during those times. The next best thing was to dream about those times and conjure up imaginary situations that I or my friends, as the protagonists, heroically mastered" (Something 8).
Balch wrote his first short story when he was just seventeen years of age. This story was about basketball since it reflected his big dream of the time, to make the Baylor University team. But the short story was rejected by the editor of Redbook, and never got published later on, either (Junior 8).
After visiting the North Texas State Teacher College (1921-1923), University of Texas (1923-1924), and Baylor University (1924), where he graduated, he moved to Idaho. One reason for Glenn Balch to move to Idaho was according to him: "I wanted to see the big mountains and white rivers" (Monroe). He started working in Emmett, Idaho, as a forest ranger, but at the end of the fire season he found a new job as a traveling correspondent for the Idaho Statesman where he worked in the southern parts of Idaho for about five years (Something 8).
During that time he began to write more seriously. Balch soon quit his job as a correspondent and earned his money as a free-lance writer (1931-1989). The landscape, surroundings, and the wild horses that lived in the Sawtooth Mountains, where he had made himself a home at Pettit Lake, inspired him. He spent two snowbound winters in these mountains. There he learned how to drive sledge dogs, how to use snowshoes, and about skiing, trapping, and hunting. Many of these experiences are reflected in his writings—the usage of snowshoes, trapping, and hunting. During his snowbound winters he had lots of time for his writing. "'My snowbound winters in that remote area have special meaning. I went there to be alone and to write,'" Something About the Author writes. About that time he decided, "maybe he'd better learn to be a writer" [. . .] (Hansen). So he went to the East and attended writing classes at Columbia University in New York. Oliver LaFarge who had won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Laughing Boy taught him (Hansen; Junior 8).
A short time after his graduation from Columbia University, he published his first book, Riders of the Rio Grande. In the years after his first publication, he wrote another 33 novels that all reflect his love for animals and the outdoors. Several of these earned awards. Besides the children's fiction he also wrote many articles for American Boy, Boy's Life, and for adult western and outdoor magazines (Something 8; Junior 8). Tim Woodward wrote in his article after Balch's death that he could easily be called Idaho's most important author of children's fiction. Glenn Balch not only published fiction but, also, wrote some non-fiction guides about the care of horses and how to ride different in styles. In these guides he shared his lifelong experiences, his knowledge about different breeds, with other horse lovers. Examples of these are Young Sportsman Guide to Western Horseback Riding and The Book of Horses.
Glenn Balch lived for most of his life in Idaho where he died on September 16, 1989, as a consequence of a car accident, except during the time of World War II, when he went into the Air Force. About his absence from the United States he wrote for Something About the Author "he 'had vivid memories of wild horses running free in the Owyhee Mountains in southern Idaho'" (9).
The Owyhee Mountains had a real impact on Glenn Balch. Above all other mountain trails, he enjoyed riding in his favorite place—the rough Owyhee country. In his book Tiger Roan he makes a vivid description of the country, "And in all the vastness there was nothing to indicate that any but animals had ever been there; no cabin, no fence, no even a wisp of smoke" (10).
On one of his trips in that remote area he saw a stallion which was to become the hero of his book Wild Horse. Horse runners were chasing the band of horses towards a trap, but the black stallion realized it and made his break for freedom. "'Coming high-headed and determined, he was the perfect picture of what a wild horse should be,'" Glenn Balch writes. "'Every rider there set out to turn him. In the end we sat strung out where he had left us, on spent, sweat-dripping horses, and watched him go up Black Mountains—back to the freedom he so gamely cherished. I hope he's there yet'" (Dust). Balch often used wild horses which he really met as protagonists of his novels.
In many of his books, the setting is not just invented, it really exists. His series Tack Ranch (eight books) also takes place in the Owyhee Mountains. Judy Hansen writes: "'that valley is really there,' Balch says. 'I used to run wild horses up there for friends several times a year.'" Another good example would be Tiger Roan, his favorite book. The environment of the Sawtooth Mountains where the horse, the main character, was born, influenced the setting for the story. In Tiger Roan the protagonist, the black stallion gets caught and trained as a rodeo horse. Tiger Roan, the horse tells the story from his point of view. Glenn Balch also brings all his experience from earlier jobs as a cowboy and range rider, branding cows and keeping them together with the help of horses, into his story.
In some of his novels Glenn Balch uses historical facts as a basis for his story. In his book Horse of Two Colors he used the history of how the Appaloosa horse breed got to Idaho and the Northern parts of the States, as a foundation for his novel. His story only differs in one small detail from the truth, which makes it to an interesting reading adventure for children.
Glenn Balch really was fascinated with horses and loved unspoiled landscapes and shared his experience and knowledge by writing children's fiction. Many aspects of his life are reflected in his stories, what makes his novels appear very close to reality. His four children wrote in his postscript to Balch's SAAS entry, "'The true appeal of his writing lay in the young people . . . The world of animals unhesitatingly welcomed participation on any child'" (Something 10).
II. Awards and Honors
1950, Boys' Book Clubs of America award for Lost Horse.
1954, 1956, 1957, George Washington Memorial Awards, Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.
1957, 1976 Junior Library Guild selections for Little Hawk and the Free Horses, and for Buck Wild.
III. Selected Writings
Children's Writings
Riders of the Rio Grande, Crowell, 1937.
Tiger Roan, illustrated by Lee Townsend, Crowell, 1938.
Hide-Rack Kidnapped, illustrated by George F. Mason, Crowell, 1939.
Indian Paint: The Story of an Indian Pony, illustrated by Nils Hogner, Crowell, 1942.
Wild Horse, illustrated by Pers Crowell, Crowell, 1947.
Viking Dog, Crowell, 1949.
Christmas Horse, Crowell, 1949.
Lost Horse, illustrated by Crowell, Crowell, 1950.
Indian Fur, illustrated by Robert Frankenberg, Crowell, 1951.
Winter Horse, Crowell, 1951.
The Midnight Colt, Crowell, 1952.
Squaw Boy, illustrated by Paul Valentino, Crowell, 1952.
Indian Saddle-Up, illustrated by Frankenberg, Crowell, 1953.
Wild Horse Tamer, Crowell, 1955.
Little Hawk and the Free Horses, illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats, Crowell, 1957.
The Brave Riders, Crowell, 1959.
White Ruff, Grosset & Dunlap, 1959.
Stallion King, Crowell, 1960.
Horse in Danger, Crowell, 1960.
The Spotted Horse, Crowell, 1961.
The Runaways, Doubleday, 1962.
Stallion's Foe, Crowell, 1963.
Sleeping Horse, Crowell, 1966.
The Flaxy Mare, illustrated by Lorence Bjorklund, Crowell, 1967.
Horse of Two Colors, illustrated by Bjorklund, Crowell, 1969.
Buck, Wild, illustrated by Ruth Sanderson, Crowell, 1976.
Nonfiction
The Book of Horses, Scholastic, 1958.
Horses: How to Train, Ride and Care for Horses, Maco, 1962.
The Young Sportsman's Guide to Western Horseback Riding, Nelson, 1965.
Western Horseback Riding, Wilshire, 1974.
Novels for Adults
Blind Man's Bullets, Ace Books, 1957.
Grass Greed, Ace Books, 1959.
IV. Works Cited
"Balch, Glenn." Contemporary Authors. Vol. 3. 1963 ed.
Horse of Two Colors. Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, 1969.
More Junior Authors. 1963 ed.
Obit. Idaho Statesman. 19 Sep. 1989.
Something About the Author. Vol. 8. Ed. Kevin S. Hi. Detroit: Gale, 1996.
Tiger Roan. N.p.: [Crowell?], n.a.
Brewer, Kenneth W. Christmas Horse. Limberlost Press. 12 April 2001.
Dust Jacket. About Glenn Balch. Wild Horse by Glenn Balch. New York: Crowell, 1947.
Flyleaf. Horse of Two Colors. By Glenn Balch. New York: Crowell, 1969.
Hansen, Judy Grigg. "Writer from the Range." Idaho Statesman. 02 Sep. 1989.
Monroe, Julie T. "The Camera's Still Rolling on Author's Life." Idaho Statesman. 16 July 1978.
Woodward, Tim. "Glenn Balch, 1902-1989." Idaho Statesman. 24 Sep. 1989.
V. Other Resources
Balch, Glenn. "An Author's Reflections—Bits and Pieces," with postscript by Betty Weston, Nikki Stilwell, Mary Birch, and Olin Balch. Something About the Author Autobiography Series, Vol. 11. Gale, 1991: 31-49.
Balch, Glenn, an Interview with a Western Writer. Prod. Boise State U. The Center. Videocassette. 1988.
Booklist October 15, 1957: 110.
Boston, Howard. Review of Viking Dog. Library Journal March 1, 1949: 382.
Christian Science Monitor November 11, 1954: 16.
Harrington, Patricia. Review of Buck, Wild. School Library Journal November, 1976: 65.
Horn Book May, 1938: 167.
Kirkus Reviews September 1, 1966.
Library Journal September 15, 1967: 3207; April 15, 1969: 1778.
New York Times April 13, 1952: 22.
Publishers Weekly October 16, 1967: 58.
Review of Buck, Wild. Booklist January 15, 1977: 715-16.
Review of Horse of Two Colors. Kirkus Reviews February 15, 1969: 177.
Review of Winter Horse. Kirkus Reviews June 15, 1951: 295.
Review of The Young Sportsman's Guide to Western Horseback Riding. Booklist September 1, 1965: 45.
This essay was submitted by a student of Joanne Davis, an English teacher at Emmett High School in Idaho.