Patricia Polacco

About

Patricia Barber Polacco (born July 11, 1944) is an American author and illustrator. Throughout her school years, Polacco struggled to learn to read but found relief by expressing herself through art. Polacco endured teasing and hid her disability until a school teacher recognized 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.

Polacco was born Patricia Barber on July 11, 1944 in Lansing, Michigan, the daughter of a teacher and a salesman turned talk show host. She lived in Williamston, Michigan until the age of three, when her parents divorced and she moved with her mother and brother to her maternal grandmother’s farm in Union City, Michigan. Many of Polacco’s stories are influenced by this farm and the folklore she heard from her Russian grandmother (referred to as “Babushka” in her books), who died in 1949 when Polacco was five years old. During the summers, Polacco lived with her father and his Irish parents. “In both households I had these amazing storytellers,” she said. The family did not have a television and…