Patricia Polacco
| Patricia Polacco | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 11, 1944 Lansing, Michigan, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author, illustrator |
| Nationality | American |
Patricia Barber Polacco (born July 11, 1944, Lansing, Michigan) is an American author and illustrator.
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 school teacher 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. She also wrote such books as Mr. Lincoln's Way and The Lemonade Club.
She is of Russian and Ukrainian-Jewish descent on her mother's side and of Irish on her father's side.
She was born in 1944, the daughter of a teacher and a salesman turned talk show host. Her parents divorced when she was three years old. She, her mother, and her brother went to live at her paternal grandmother's farm in Williamson, MI, the setting of many of her stories. After her grandmother's death, the family moved to Coral Gables, Florida, and then three years later to Oakland, California. She and her brother spent their early life living in two places: school years with their mother in Oakland, California, and summers with their father and his parents 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 lack of confidence. Although her grandmother died in 1949, when Polacco was only five years old, she appears in several of Polacco's books.
At Oakland Technical High School, Polacco became friends with Frank Oz. She wrote When Lightning Comes in a Jar as a tribute to her grandmother (referred to as "Babushka" in her books), and a cousin. Polacco attended Ohio State University and earned a M.F.A. and a PhD in Art History. She did not start writing and illustrating her first children's book until she was 41 years old. She resides in her native Union City, Michigan, although not on her family home, but on a different property which she purchased, which was originally known as "The Plantation".
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