Patricia Polacco (born July 11, 1944, in Lansing, Michigan, USA) is the author and illustrator of many picture books for children. Although she struggled in school and 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 teacher recognized that she could not read and began to help her. Thank you, Mr. Falker is Polacco's retelling of this encounter and its outcome.
Polacco attended several colleges in Oakland, California: California College of Arts and Crafts and Laney Community College. Later she attended Monash University and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. Having learned to work around her dyslexia, Polacco earned a Master's Degree in Fine Arts and a Ph.D. in Art History with an emphasis on Iconography. She then worked for several years restoring religious icons.
Polacco began writing books when she was 41, and many of her works are semi-autobiographical. Because her parents divorced when she was young, she and her brother spent their early life living in two places: schoolyears with their mother and grandparents in the multicultural environment of Oakland, CA, and summers with their father and his parents on a farm in Union City, Michigan. Polacco's mother's family were Russian Jews from Ukraine, while her father's family were Irish, and this multicultural heritage is evident in many of her stories and illustrations. Many Polacco works were inspired by stories told by her grandparents, and she attributes her writing talent to her family's love of storytelling.
Polacco also serves as a speaker for schools and libraries, sharing her stories with children and adults. She formerly lived in Oakland, California, but now lives in Union City, Michigan, where she periodically opens her house so her fans can take part in writing seminars, storytelling festivals, literature conferences and various events celebrating children's literature. She is afraid of flying, and now travels only by ground transportation, which has limited her choice of venues. In 2006 Polacco's appearance at the International Reading Association conference in Chicago, Illinois, was cancelled due to fears by the sponsor, SRA/McGraw-Hill, that Polacco would speak out against the No Child Left Behind Act, which she opposes. On her website, Polacco has contended that McGraw-Hill profits from the No Child Left Behind Act because it sells testing materials mandated by the act.
Polacco has earned many awards for her writings and illustrations. Among these are the Sydney Taylor Book Award in 1988 for The Keeping Quilt, the Commonwealth Club of California Recognition of Excellence for Babushka's Doll in 1990, and Chicken Sunday in 1992. She also won the Parents Choice Honors for Some Birthday! in 1991, Dream Keeper in 1997, and Thank you, Mr. Falker in 1998, as well as many others.