40 Fun Facts About Patricia Polacco

Which teacher, honored in the title of a Patricia Polacco picture book, first noticed she could not read?

Mr. Falker stopped the classmates who teased her and brought in a reading specialist to help. Polacco thanked him decades later with the 1998 book Thank You, Mr. Falker.

Which condition, finally diagnosed when she was 14, had kept a young Patricia Polacco from keeping up at school?

Dyslexia went unnoticed for years, so classmates teased her while she hid it behind her drawing. She says the same wiring that scrambled words also let her draw unusually well.

What did the space rock that crashed onto the Michigan farm of Patricia Polacco's grandparents later become?

The family headstone in the village cemetery is that very rock. Polacco retold the night it fell in a picture book and takes a piece of it along on school visits.

Which unusual ingredient from the garden goes into the cake Grandma bakes in Patricia Polacco's Thunder Cake?

Tomatoes join the eggs and milk the pair gather while a storm rolls in, keeping a frightened girl too busy to hide. The book ends with the recipe itself.

Patricia Polacco credits her vivid imagination to a storytelling childhood spent without which household item?

A television never entered the house, so evenings went to her grandparents' tales instead. She still tells young writers to switch off their screens and listen to the voice inside.

Which Muppets puppeteer became Patricia Polacco's friend at her California high school?

Frank Oz shared her high school before joining Jim Henson's Muppets at 19. He went on to perform Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster and Bert.

Pink and Say, a story handed down through Patricia Polacco's family, follows two teenage soldiers in which war?

The Civil War throws together Say, a wounded white farm boy from Ohio, and Pink, a Black soldier who carries him to safety. Say was Polacco's own ancestor and passed the story down.

Children's author Patricia Polacco has told fans she can sometimes be found out riding which motorcycle?

A Harley-Davidson is one of her ways to unwind between books. Her other habit is walking her goats and lamb on leashes, which she says makes the neighbors laugh out loud.

In Patricia Polacco's Mrs. Katz and Tush, what kind of animal is Tush, the pet Larnel brings his widowed neighbor?

A cat without a tail is the gift, and Mrs. Katz accepts only if Larnel will help look after her. Years later his own children call the old woman their grandmother.

In Patricia Polacco's Just Plain Fancy, the strange egg found by Amish sisters Naomi and Ruth hatches into what?

A peacock is far too showy for a community that prizes plainness, so Naomi fears he will be shunned. The elders rule instead that such beauty is simply how he was made.

In which Michigan city was children's author and illustrator Patricia Polacco born?

Lansing was home only briefly: her parents divorced when she was three, and she moved to her grandmother's farm. Her mother was a teacher and her father a salesman turned talk-show host.

Michigan-born Patricia Polacco traveled to which country to earn her master's degree and doctorate?

Australia is where she finished her studies, at universities in Melbourne, and where she met the man whose surname she now signs on every book.

Patricia Polacco took her surname from her second husband, Enzo, who made his living in which profession?

Chef and cooking teacher Enzo Polacco came from Trieste, Italy, and survived the Holocaust as a boy. She set her rhyming romp In Enzo's Splendid Gardens in a restaurant.

Patricia Polacco's father's family, storytellers like her mother's Russian side, came to America from which country?

Ireland's County Limerick was home to her father's people, and she spent childhood summers with those grandparents. Her mother's family were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Ukraine.

After leaving Michigan as a child, Patricia Polacco grew up in which California city, the setting of Chicken Sunday?

Oakland was her home for nearly 37 years, on a street in the Rockridge district. She loved that her neighbors there came in every color, idea and religion.

In Patricia Polacco's Chicken Sunday, what do three children hope to buy for Miss Eula, the grandmother they adore?

An Easter hat in a shop window is her dream, so the children decorate eggs to sell there. The shopkeeper, moved by their effort, ends up giving her the hat for free.

In Patricia Polacco's Rechenka's Eggs, what kind of wounded creature is Rechenka, nursed back to health by Babushka?

A goose that falls injured from the sky, Rechenka smashes the eggs Babushka spent all winter painting for a festival in Moscow. She makes amends by laying a dozen dazzlingly decorated ones.

Which Jewish holiday do Larnel and his elderly neighbor share in Patricia Polacco's Mrs. Katz and Tush?

Passover, she tells him, celebrates freedom, and she points out that her people were once enslaved just as his were. It is her first one since her husband died.

In Polacco's My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother, young Patricia finally outlasts her brother on which carnival ride?

The merry-go-round wins her the contest and a dizzy fall, and it is her brother who carries her home and runs for the doctor. She had made a wish the night before to beat him at anything.

In Polacco's Rotten Richie and the Ultimate Dare, Trisha's hockey-playing brother accepts a dare to perform in what?

A ballet recital is the dare, and he accepts on one condition: she must play in a hockey game. She scores the winning goal, and he nails his dance.

Which book did Patricia Polacco sell first, after carrying her portfolio around New York publishers with her mother?

Meteor! sold in 1987, the year she and her mother hauled an eighty-pound portfolio from publisher to publisher. She had only begun writing books at 41.

Before writing for children, Patricia Polacco earned a doctorate in which academic subject?

Art history, with a focus on Russian and Greek icons, led to work restoring old pieces for museums. She has also served as a consultant on icon restoration.

Which twentieth-century American illustrator has Patricia Polacco named as her greatest artistic hero?

Norman Rockwell, she wrote, is someone every illustrator has studied and copied at some point. Her childhood favorites also included Beatrix Potter, Wanda Gág and Dr. Seuss.

The Butterfly, based on the wartime memories of Patricia Polacco's aunt Monique, is set in which occupied country?

France under Nazi occupation is where young Monique finds a Jewish girl hidden in her own cellar. Her mother had been sheltering the family in secret, and the girls play together at night.

In Polacco's The Lemonade Club, what does a whole fifth-grade class do to support Marilyn through cancer treatment?

They shave their heads so Marilyn is not the only bald one when she returns from chemotherapy. The story is true, drawn from the life of a friend of Polacco's daughter.

In Polacco's The Junkyard Wonders, what do Trisha and her special-class friends find at a scrapyard and repair?

A plane is what Trisha's group restores, and the whole class buys an engine for it. The book grew out of a real class Polacco was placed in as a girl.

In Polacco's Mr. Lincoln's Way, the principal reaches school bully Eugene through the boy's love of which creatures?

Birds fascinate Eugene, whose grandfather taught him about them, so the principal puts him to work in the school's new atrium. Together they lead a brood of ducklings to a pond.

In Polacco's Babushka Baba Yaga, the lonely witch of Russian folklore disguises herself because she longs for what?

A grandchild to love is all she wants, so she covers her tall pointed ears and becomes little Victor's carer. She later saves him from wolves and is welcomed back by the village.

In Patricia Polacco's Emma Kate, the surprise ending reveals that the story's narrator is really which animal?

An elephant has been telling the story all along, and the little girl called Emma Kate is its imaginary friend. Polacco dedicated the book to Dr. Seuss's Horton.

In Polacco's Ginger and Petunia, which animal dresses up as her pianist owner and fools the whole town?

A pig named Petunia steps in when the house sitter never arrives, even teaching Ginger's piano students. She also exposes a forged painting at a museum without being found out.

In Polacco's Holes in the Sky, Trisha's grandmother calls which lights openings that let heaven shine through?

The stars, her Babushka promises, are where she will watch from and send a sign. After she dies the family moves to California, where a neighbor called Miss Eula helps Trisha heal.

Patricia Polacco's Clara and Davie tells of the girlhood of Clara Barton, who went on to found which organization?

American Red Cross founder Clara Barton was a timid child with a lisp, taught at home. When her brother Davie broke both legs in a fall, she set the bones and nursed him for two years.

Which PBS children's series built whole episodes around Patricia Polacco's Rechenka's Eggs and Mrs. Katz and Tush?

Reading Rainbow made Rechenka's Eggs a feature book in 1992, then returned for Mrs. Katz and Tush and Appelemando's Dreams. LeVar Burton hosted the series through its PBS run.

Patricia Polacco's Michigan farmhouse, built around 1860, once played a part in which chapter of America's past?

The Underground Railroad once ran through the house, a Michigan heritage home on a hill at the edge of her village. She says Abraham Lincoln walked through it while his horses rested.

Patricia Polacco usually writes her own stories, but which classic American poem did she illustrate?

Casey at the Bat, Ernest Thayer's 1888 ballad of a slugger who strikes out, carries Thayer's name as author and hers as illustrator. He first published it under the pen name Phin.

In Polacco's Fiona's Lace, two sisters leave a trail of lace so their parents can find them after which disaster?

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 breaks out near the family's tenement while the parents are away working. The lace trick echoes how the girls' father first found their mother.

Patricia Polacco's John Philip Duck imagines how ducks first came to swim in the lobby of which famous hotel?

The Peabody in Memphis has kept ducks in its lobby fountain since the 1930s, and they walk there on a red carpet to a John Philip Sousa march. Polacco's hero Edward becomes the hotel's first Duck Master.

Which honor for Jewish children's books did Patricia Polacco win for The Keeping Quilt and The Blessing Cup?

Sydney Taylor Award judges honored The Keeping Quilt, her story of a quilt passed down four generations of her family. She brings the real quilt for children to see at school visits.

In Polacco's The Trees of the Dancing Goats, which illness leaves the neighbors too sick to celebrate Christmas?

Scarlet fever has the neighbors bedridden, so Trisha's Jewish family makes each of them a Christmas tree. They decorate the trees with the wooden animals Grampa carved as Hanukkah gifts.

In Patricia Polacco's Pink and Say, what is the name of Pink's mother, who nurses the wounded Say back to health?

Moe Moe Bay feeds and comforts both boys at the abandoned plantation where her family had been enslaved. She dies drawing raiders away from the cellar where the two are hiding.