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Patricia Polacco was born on July 11, 1944 in Lansing, Michigan. She currently still resides on her family’s farm estate in Union City, Michigan. Her mother was a Jewish immigrant from Russia and her father was from The Country of Limerick in Ireland. Both cultures loved storytelling, hence how Patricia found her love of Her mother was a school teacher and her father was a salesman who became a talk show host.  Her parents were divorced when she was only three years old. Her mother, brother and her self live at her Grandmother’s farm in Union City, Michigan. She still resides there today.  After her Grandmother’s death in 1949, her family moved to Coral Gables, FL and then to Oakland, California.  She spent her school years with her mother in Oakland and her summers in Michigan with her father. She did not learn to read until she was 14 years old.  It was not until this age that one of her teachers discovered that she was dyslexic, and this was the reason she could not read well. The story Thank You Mr. Falker was a thank you to the teacher that helped discovered this.

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She has been married twice. She has two grown children, a male and a female, she had these children with her first husband. Her second marriage also ended in divorce, his name was Enzo Mario Polacco and is a chef. She is an advocate for children’s rights. She recently had open heart surgery after the traumatic experience of the school shooting in Sandy Hook, in Connecticut. She is also an advocate for anti-bullying. She travels to different schools in the United States to bring awareness to bullying.  She has written and illustrated over 115 books for children. She is just starting to write adult books. She struggled with reading as a young child but found that art helped her to become a better reader. She did not write her first book until she was 41 years old.

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She writes a lot of her books based on her family, friends and the memories she has with them. In the book When Lighting Comes in a Jar, she talks about her family reunion and the memories she has of her family reunions as a young child, like their cousins wearing the same clothes at each reunion on page 1. She starts writing a lot of her books my sitting on the rocking chair, such as the book Sissy Boy, she writes about a boy that she went to school with in Michigan, Tom. She remembers him participating in a talent show. She likes to add life lessons to her books also, in the book An A from Miss. Keller, she writes about teaching children that it is ok to think outside of the box and it’s ok to be different. She likes to write about selflessness in her books, especially in the book Thank You Mr. Falker, in this book she was being bullied, Mr. Falker stood up for her unlike any other teacher who never did. He also stayed after school using his own time to help her become a reader. She has honored her heritage in two of the books she has written, The Keeping Quilt, Tikvah Means Hope, The Butterfly and her folklore retelling of Luba and the Wren. She wrote two books about her brother, Rotten Ritchie and My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother, in which she talks about her brother annoying her, like when she states on page 13, “I double dog can’t stand you”, something you can hear yourself telling your sibling. All her books that I read are heartwarming and really make you think of your family and your life experiences. Her book The Junkyard is a book that has just about every emotion in it. When reading it you get feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, fear and frustration. The book is about her moving with her father and being placed in a special education class which is called The Junkyard. Her artistic ability shines through in a lot of her books, not only of the illustrations she draws, but a lot of her books have crafts in them she is making, such as in My Ol’ Man, she writes about making crepe-paper parrots with her Gramma, which you can see them doing in the picture on page 12. In Some Birthday throughout the book you can see her Gramma knitting a quilt on page 21. Though she writes a lot about her family she has written books on so many different topics such as multicultural such as in Pink and Say, she writes about an African American and a Caucasian male who become close during the Civil War.  She writes about multi-generational connections in Something About Hensley’s, where she writes about the old man Hensley’s providing and working with younger families, so their mother could be treated for her asthma.

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Why is Patricia Polacco A Good Author For 3rd-8th graders?

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Why is Patricia Polacco A Good Author For 3rd-8th graders?

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Patricia Polacco writes books for children of all ages. A lot of her books though are picture books but are appropriate for children who are in 3rd-8th grade. Polacco's books use bigger vocabulary words that may be difficult for children younger then 3rd grade. A lot of her books also have unfamiliar words to a younger grade level and phrases and sayings that a younger child would not understand. The descriptive language that Patricia uses in her stories is also well suited for students who range from 8-13 years old. Students in 6th-8th grade can use her books to help them understand the concepts of identity, stereotyping and discriminating. Grades 3-5 really can benefit from Polacco's books because they are short but yet long enough for a student to complete a character study.