Barry Louis Polisar

Barry Louis Polisar is an American singer-songwriter, author, and storyteller who has spent decades writing music and books specifically for children while never talking down to them. His songs are playful, funny, and often gently subversive, tackling everyday kid concerns — friendship, disgust, boredom, and family — with wit rather than sentimentality.

He gained wider recognition when his song «All I Want Is You» opened the Academy Award-winning film Juno, introducing his homemade, acoustic sound to a mainstream audience far beyond the children's-music circuit he had built his career in. Songs like «I've Got a Dog and My Dog's Name Is Cat» and «I Need You Like a Donut Needs a Hole» exemplify his knack for absurd, memorable wordplay set to simple, warm folk arrangements.

A multiple Parents' Choice Award winner, Polisar has written for Sesame Street and The Weekly Reader and appeared in an Emmy-winning children's television show, cementing his place as one of the more distinctive and independent voices in American children's music.