One morning in Oakland, California, a young girl walked into her new school for the first time, nervous, shy, and sure she was the dumbest girl alive. She had just moved from the midwest where she left behind all of the elementary school teachers she had fooled into believing she could read. It wasn’t until she was a young teen that one of her new teachers discovered her dyslexia and helped her overcome it, opening to her the wide world of books.
That young girl was the acclaimed and much-loved children’s book author Patricia Polacco—“Trisha” in her autobiographical Thank you, Mr. Falker, a book that was dedicated to George Felker (“the real Mr. Falker”), the beloved teacher who changed her life. In it, Polacco describes how she was bullied for being stupid, but when she was fourteen, her favorite teacher, who had always praised her artistic ability, found out her secret: she couldn’t read.
Out of his own pocket he paid for a reading specialist to come and work with Polacco, and she was eventually able to overcome her rare form of dyslexia.
It was yet another classroom teacher, Violet Chew, who set Polacco on the road to becoming an artist. In The Art Of Miss Chew, Polacco tells the story of how Miss Chew taught her to truly see– “to perceive, evaluate, and appreciate the beauty of art.” Polacco learned to speak the language of art, what Miss Chew called “the language of emotion and images.”
The rest, of course, is history: Polacco has written and illustrated over 115 children’s books, loved by children and adults alike, and won countless awards. Each of Polacco’s illustrations is full of emotion, what Miss Chew had called the language of art: each expression, each gesture, even the scenery bursts with feeling. But without “Mr. Falker” and Miss Chew there would be no Patricia Polacco as we know her.
“For me,” Polacco says, “art is like breathing. I cannot imagine my life without it.”
The self-proclaimed “queen of the personal narrative,” Polacco draws on stories from her own family history for nearly all of her books. She was deeply influenced by her Irish grandparents and her Ukranian grandmother. In fact, she lived with various grandparents for much of her life, and often speaks in interviews of the great privilege it was to have the older generation living in the same house with her: “It gave us a sense of our place; it gave us a sense of our birth order; it gave us a sense that we were loved long before we were born” (1).
When Polacco and her brother were young, her Ukranian grandmother would call them into the living room each evening for “firetalk” during which the two children would sit around the fire and listen as their grandmother told them family stories, over and over, until they seeped into the children’s bones and shaped who they were. After the stories, Polacco says, she and her brother would lean into their grandmother and ask, as children inevitably do, “But is that a true story, Grandmother?” Their babushka would respond in her thick Russian accent, “Well of course is true story! . . . But may not have happened” (1).
Russian Babushkas based on her own dear grandmother appear over and over in Polacco’s books.
In The Keeping Quilt*, Polacco tells a beautiful story of how pieces of her ancestors’ clothing—a shirt, a nightdress, an apron—were kept and sewn carefully into a quilt, preserving pieces of her family history. Polacco illustrates everything in black and white, except the quilt and the pieces of clothing that become the quilt–brilliant contrasts of color in each composition.
In The Blessing Cup*, Polacco uses the same artistic strategy–all the artwork is black and white except for the tea set and the keeping quilt (which makes an appearance in this book, too).
Many of Polacco’s books were also inspired by the poor neighborhood she grew up in, her artwork naturally reflecting the different cultures, races, and religions of her neighbors.
On her personal YouTube channel, Polacco describes her process for drawing a book, beginning with writing the story and ending with the color finishes going to the art director at her publisher.
The actual art process Polacco describes very simply: she creates pencil drawings first, takes them to an office supply store to enlarge them, transfers them to “stout” paper, and then colors them with acetone-based Pentel markers. These particular markers allow for layer upon layer of color, making the finished work look like a painting.
Polacco’s very deliberate use of black and white drawings for many of the people in her books stems from a love of black and white photography.
I personally feel you get more color in black and white photography than you do in color photography. Sometimes I like to draw the faces with these contrasts and half tones, because, to me, it actually can bring in more detail than if you put it in color. (1)
Polacco uses this same artistic strategy in Rechenka’s Eggs.
The story follows a Russian Orthodox babushka known in her town for her beautiful painted eggs. One day she finds a wounded goose and takes it in, caring for it, nursing it back to health, and naming it Rechenka. Inevitably, the goose ends up breaking Babushka’s beautiful painted eggs, but instead of responding to this tragedy with anger or despair, Babushka responds with forgiveness and love. Polacco captures this love and humility in her simple pencil drawings of Babushka’s face.
The next morning, Babushka finds a miracle: Rechenka has laid a brilliantly colored egg and continues to lay painted eggs for twelve days until Babushka has enough to take to the yearly festival. Babushka’s treasure–her painted eggs–were lost, and yet because of her humility and love, her treasure comes back to her even better than before.
The art in Rechenka’s Eggs is bright and colorful, with geometric patterning on the painted eggs, the snowflakes, and the goose’s feathers.
The clothing is also vibrant, but billowy instead of geometric, and full of floral patterns in the style of Ukranian folk art.
Babushka’s face and hands are drawn in black and white, focusing the reader’s attention on the face and creating a jarring contrast to the brilliant colors of the clothing and scenery throughout the book.
Polacco’s drawings of the common townsfolk are full of bustle and movement, and utterly charming in the details of their colorfully-patterned clothing and their black and white faces–somehow their personalities come through more vividly without the use of color in their faces.
In the end, it was art itself that helped Polacco overcome her dyslexia as a girl. The reading therapist her teacher hired used, among other things, the art of M. C. Escher, a master of tessellation, to help Polacco make sense of positive and negative space.
“As soon as I saw that work,” Polacco says, “I understood how I read . . . I shook and cried because I understood it!” (2)
If you have only dabbled in Polacco’s books, I recommend checking your library for the ones you haven’t read! Her stories are warm and personal, and her illustrations are marvelous. My seven-year-old daughter Mary disappeared for several hours after I brought home a huge stack of Polacco’s books from the library. She read each one multiple times and was fascinated by Polacco’s stories; she loved that they reflect actual life events from Polacco’s own childhood or family.
There are many interviews with Polacco on the internet and she is absolutely delightful to listen to, a wonderful storyteller in person. Here are two I especially loved:
(1) 2010 Interview with Reading Rockets
(2) The 2012 National Book Festival
*Nota Bene: In later editions of The Blessing Cup and The Keeping Quilt, Polacco includes the same-sex marriage of her daughter. She has also released a newer book called In Our Mothers’ House, which has a same-sex couple.
Thank you for reading!
Does your family have any Patricia Polacco favorites?
An Orange for Frankie!
I've never heard of her. Thanks for sharing! Definitely going to look for her books now.