"Sidelights"

Author and illustrator Patricia Polacco is "as natural a storyteller as they come," according to Shannon Maughan in Publishers Weekly. The highly praised, award-winning Polacco has dozens of picture books to her credit, quite a feat in light of the fact that she did not start publishing until 1987, at the age of forty-one. A popular writer and artist, Polacco is lauded for transforming childhood memories, favorite episodes from family history, and elements from her Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Irish heritage into books such as My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother, that are noted for their freshness, originality, warmth, panache, and universality. The characters in her picture books The Keeping Quilt, Uncle Vova's Tree, Pink and Say, Welcome Comfort, The Butterfly, and In Our Mothers' House reflect a variety of races, religions, sexual identities, and age groups, celebrating both diversity and commonality. Several of Polacco's works retell stories that have been handed down for generations and feature Russian and Jewish customs and folklore, while others focus on African and Native Americans, the Irish, and the Amish. Whatever their subject, Polacco's tales are noted for their clear, fluid language and a text that makes them suitable for reading aloud.

As an illustrator, Polacco works in watercolor, gouache, charcoal, and collage, and she characteristically offsets images penciled on a stark white field with bright colors and patterned backgrounds. Praising Polacco's renderings of facial expressions as "priceless," School Library Journal reviewer Grace Oliff wrote in her review of John Philip Duck that the picture book's "artwork is simply beautiful as the artist orchestrates a harmonious symphony of color."

Polacco was born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1944, the daughter of William Barber, a salesman who became a television talk-show host, and Mary Ellen Barber, a teacher. Her father was of Irish descent and her mother was from a Russian/Ukrainian background. After her parents' divorce when she was three years old, Polacco and her older brother lived mostly with their mother on her grandmother's farm in Union City, Michigan. When she was five years old, her beloved babushka (grandmother) passed away, after which her mother moved the family to Coral Gables, Florida, for three years before settling in Oakland, California. Writing on her home page, Polacco recalled that living on the farm in Union City "was the most magical time of my life" and "my Babushka and other grandparents were some of the most inspirational people in my life."

Polacco inherited a natural storytelling voice from both sides of the family. Although stories--both oral and read from books--fascinated the introspective girl, she had problems reading on her own. At age fourteen Polacco was finally diagnosed with dyslexia; by this time, however, she had already suffered her classmates' taunts due to her lackluster progress in reading and math. Sketching and illustrating became her focus; her classmates were speechless when confronted with her fluid artwork. The world created by her own imagination became Polacco's refuge during adolescence.

Graduating from high school, Polacco received a college scholarship, but...