By L. Lockeridge (from Chapters online)
“Although I first judged it to be a boy’s book, I found that I could relate to so much of it as, on my own, I had many similar experiences. Wading around in a slough near our house in Manitoba. Catching and playing with frogs. Making a teepee with willows leaning up against a tree. Dreaming. Climbing up and standing on top of a fence post and singing at the top of my voice to the trees across the road. This book inspires these memories and more. I envy the opportunity Ken Budd had to meet and be with W.O. Mitchell. There are a few people in this life I would like to meet, like to know, and W.O. was one of them. This of course would be because of “Who Has Seen the Wind.” I still have his obituary, which I tore out of a magazine, stored in my poetry book. Ken Budd’s writing moves me to recall Edna Jacques’ poetry. She writes so well that you are there with her. This one verse from “Prairie Bred” is particularly potent for those of us from the Prairies. “If you are prairie-bred…there seems to be A sort of fellowship that speaks to me: You talk of wind, and I can feel the sting Of drifting soil that darkens all the spring; You speak of dawn, and I can see the sky Flaming with light to drive the darkness by.” Thank you, Ken Budd, for writing books that are simple, uncomplicated and that touch the heart and memory. It is good to hold on and keep the heart and mind of a child. Who needs to grew up anyway?”