Patricia Polacco

PATRICIA POLACCO

Patricia Barber Polacco (b. July 11, 1944, Lansing, Michigan) is the author and illustrator of numerous picture books for children.

She struggled in school because she was unable to read until age 14 due to dyslexia; she found relief by expressing herself through art. Polacco endured teasing and hid her disability until a schoolteacher recognized that she could not read and began to help her. Her book Thank You, Mr. Falker is Polacco's retelling of this encounter and its outcome.

Her family is of Russian and Ukrainian descent on one side and Irish on the other. The early years of Polacco's childhood were spent at her grandmother's farm in Union City, Michigan, the setting for many of her published stories. She now resides on another farm in Union City, originally called The Plantation. Although Polacco's grandmother died in 1949, when Polacco was only 5, "Babushka," or grandmother in Russian, nevertheless appears in several of Polacco's books.

After her grandmother's death, the family moved to Coral Gables, Florida, and then three years later to Oakland, California. Polacco's parents had divorced when she was three, and she and her brother therefore spent their early life living in two places: school years with their mother in the bustling environment of Oakland, California, and summers with their father and his parents on a farm in Michigan. Polacco was discouraged in school and did not learn to read until she was nearly fourteen. In junior high school, one of her teachers finally discovered that dyslexia was the reason for her not demonstrating confidence. In high school, she became friends with Frank Oz. Polacco wrote "When Lightning Comes in a Jar" as a tribute to her babushka, and to her Detroit Tiger cousin Billy. Patricia Polacco attended a University, majoring in Fine Art. She received her graduate degree and eventually received a Ph.D. in Art History. Patricia Polacco did not start writing and illustrating her first children's book until she was 41 years old. She has written many books.  

Some of her wonderful books:

1. Bully
2. The Art of Miss Chew
3. Bun Bun Button
4. Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln
5. Bun Bun Button
6. The Junkyard Wonders
7. January's Sparrow
8. In Our Mother's House
9. Someone for Mr. Sussman
10. For the Love of Autumn
11. The Lemonade Club
12. Ginger and Petunia
13. Something About Hensley's
14. Rotten Richie and the Ultimate Dare
15. Emma Kate
16. Mommies Say Shhh
17. An Orange for Frankie
18. John Philip Duck
19. Oh Look!
20. The Graves Family
21. "G" is for Goat
22. Christmas Tapestry
23. When Lightning Comes in a Jar
24. Mr. Lincoln's Way
25. Betty Doll
26. The Butterfly
27. Luba and the Wren
28. Welcome Comfort
29. Mrs. MacK
30. Thank You, Mr. Falker
31. In Enzo's Splendid Gardens
32. The Trees of the Dancing Goats
33. I Can Hear the Sun : A Modern Myth
34. Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair
35. Babushka's Mother Goose
36. Babushka's Doll
37. My Ol' Man
38. My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother
39. Pink and Say
40. Tikvah Means Hope
41. Babushka Baba Yaga
42. The Bee Tree
43. Picnic at Mudsock Meadow
44. Mrs. Katz and Tush
45. Chicken Sunday
46. Some Birthday!
47. Appelemando's Dreams
48. Uncle Vova's Tree
49. Just Plain Fancy
50. Boat Ride With Lillian Two Blossom
51. Thunder Cake
52. The Keeping Quilt
53. Casey at the Bat
54. Rechenka's Eggs
55. Meteor!

Of her writing, she has said:

Some useful links to help you learn more:

A short, Scholastic biography

Her personal website

Some wonderful classroom resources

My personal reflection:

I've always loved Patricia Polacco's books. They are engaging, accessible and beautifully illustrated. She has a keen eye for diversity issues and has an inclusive, welcoming voice.  Polacco's stories are in many ways a reflection of her own life. In Firetalking, her photo-autobiography for children, she speaks of her stories as being true, "Of course it's true...but it may not have happened." (p. 30). She is a consummate storyteller who draws upon family history and ritual for many of her tales. Through them, she preserves and passes on the very essence of her being, of those things she cares about. Thus, her picture books for children are a kind of reflective autobiography. The humanity captured in her work is shared so powerfully through the structure of story and the visual images on the page that each reader or listener can incorporate some portion of that humanity into his or her own life's story. Her enthusiasm for life and for storytelling is captured in the bursts of color and the energetic movement of her illustrations and words.

Unlike most authors of children's books, Polacco does not create essentially childlike stories in which the reader is the central character. Rather, she is respectful of young children and believes that they can accept their places in the human community, playing small but essential roles in the life stories of that community and identifying with others very different from themselves. Listening to her stories, they learn to care about and to feel with those much older than themselves, those who lived in different times and places than they could ever experience, and those of different racial, ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds than the people in their own circumscribed lives. The power of these stories is that they present these differences respectfully and joyfully, often as part of the author's own childhood, while allowing child readers to participate, not just in the character's stories, but in the larger stories of what it means to be human.