Patricia polacco family

Patricia Barber Polacco born July 11, is an American author and illustrator. Throughout her school years, Polacco struggled with reading but 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.

Patricia polacco childhood

She also wrote such books as Mr. Lincoln's Way and The Lemonade Club. Polacco was born Patricia Barber on July 11, 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 Russian folklore she heard from her grandmother referred to as "Babushka" in her books , who died in when Polacco was five years old. During the summers, Polacco lived with her father and his Irish parents. The family did not have a television and Polacco said on NPR , "our evenings were spent listening to glorious tales being told by the grandparents.

Where does patricia polacco live now

Finally, in junior high school, one of her teachers finally realized that she had dyslexia. The book Pink and Say comes from the life of a great-great-grandfather on her father's side, Sheldon Russell Curtis, who fought in the American Civil War and developed a moving friendship with a Black soldier named Pinkus Aylee. In , following the death of Polacco's maternal grandmother, her family moved to Coral Gables for three years and then the Rockridge district of Oakland, California.