Patricia Barber Polacco is the author and illustrator of numerous picture books for children. She struggled in school because she 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 schoolteacher 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. Her family is of Russian, Georgian and Ukrainian descent on one side and Irish on the other. The early years of Polacco's childhood were spent at her... grandmother's farm in Union City, Michigan, the setting for many of her published stories. She now resides on another farm in Union City, originally called The Plantation. Although Polacco's grandmother died in 1949, when Polacco was only 5, "Babushka," or grandmother in Russian, nevertheless appears in several of Polacco's books. After her grandmother's death, the family moved to Coral Gables, Florida, and then three years later to Oakland, California.
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| Birthdate: | July 11, 1944 |
| Age: | 67 |