Walters, Eric (1957- ), is a Canadian children’s author known for his novels about teenage boys who face difficult challenges in life. His main characters always overcome their problems, reflecting the author’s message that young people can triumph over obstacles if they make the right choices. Walters’s works are drawn from his experiences as a social worker, teacher, and philanthropist. They have been praised for their realism and fast-paced action. In 2021, Walters won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature-Text for his novel The King of Jam Sandwiches (2020), in which a young teen copes with his father’s mental illness. The Governor General’s Literary Awards are the highest national prizes given to Canadian authors.
Walters’s first novel, Stand Your Ground (1994), became an immediate best seller. In the novel, a boy realizes that he prefers life with his old-fashioned grandparents to teaming up with his con man (swindler) father. In Walters’s next novel, STARS (1996), a boy plans to escape from a northern Ontario camp for young offenders until he realizes he loves the wilderness where the camp is located.
Several of Walters’s novels are set during World War II (1939-1945), in which Canada was one of the Allies that fought against Germany and Japan. War of the Eagles (1998) centers on a Tsimshian First Nations boy who observes prejudice against a Japanese-Canadian family in his village. In the sequel, Caged Eagles (2000), a boy rebels against the unjust treatment of his family because of their Japanese heritage. Camp X (2002) and its sequel, Camp 30 (2004), are historically accurate wartime adventure stories set in Canada with teenage boy heroes.
Walters organized the “Seven” series of adventure novels for young readers. Seven Canadian authors each wrote one novel in the series. Walters’s contribution was Between Heaven and Earth (2012). In it, a Canadian teenager climbs Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa to scatter the ashes of his beloved grandfather. Walters has also written a series of novels for younger readers about basketball. The series began with Three on Three (1999).
Eric Robert Walters was born in Toronto, Ontario, on March 3, 1957. He had a difficult childhood. His mother died when he was 4. He and his older sister were raised by their father and often had to fend for themselves. Walters’s street-smart but sensitive central characters are inspired by children he knew while growing up in a tough neighborhood of Toronto.
In 1979, Walters completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology at York University in Toronto and became a social worker. While he was working, he also earned a bachelor of social work degree in 1982, a master of social work degree in 1986, and a bachelor of education degree in 1989. He taught elementary school from 1989 until the early 2000’s and continued to work part time as a social worker. Stand Your Ground developed through interaction with his fifth-grade students.
In 2008, Walters and his wife, Anita, founded Creation of Hope, a program that provides support for orphans in a small rural county in Kenya. In 2014, Walters was appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions to literature for children and young adults. Appointment to the order is one of Canada’s highest civilian honors.
