PATRICIA POLACCO: A WOMAN'S VOICE OF REMEMBRANCE
KAY E. VANDERGRIFT
Patricia Polacco's stories deserve serious attention because of their
importance both as children's literature and as the voice of a woman who
truly celebrates women's lives. Her work embodies the metaphoric power
that unites human beings.
BASIC THEMES IN POLACCO'S WORK
Polacco's stories are in many ways a reflection of her own life. In Firetalking,
her photo-autobiography for children, she speaks of her stories as being
true, "Of course it's true. . . but it may not have happened." (p. 30)
She is a consummate storyteller who draws upon family history and ritual
for many of her tales. Through them, she preserves and passes on the very
essence of her being, of those things she cares about. Thus, her picture
books for children are a kind of reflective autobiography [Although a term
often employed for adult autobiography, it seems useful here. See, for
example, Estelle Jelinek's Women's Autobiography and Shari Benstock's
The
Private Self. or metaphoric autobiography in which aspects of her personal
history are recorded and transformed to make them universal and accessible
to children, both as living memories shared and as new meanings which can
take their places in each child's developing sense of the world. The humanity
captured in Polacco's work is shared so powerfully through the structure
of story and the visual images on the page that each reader or listener
can incorporate some portion of that humanity into his or her own life's
story. Her enthusiasm for life and for storytelling is captured in the
bursts of color and the energetic movement of her illustrations as well
as in her words.
Unlike most authors of children's books, Polacco does not create essentially
childlike stories in which the reader becomes the central character living
through his/her own story. Rather, she respects young children enough to
believe that they can accept their places in the human community, playing
small but essential roles in the life stories of that community and identifying
with others very different from themselves. Listening to her stories, they
learn to care about and to feel with those much older then themselves,
those who lived in different times and places than they could ever experience,
and those of different racial, ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds
than the people in their own circumscribed lives. The power of these stories
is that they present these differences respectfully and joyfully, often
as a part of the author's own childhood, while allowing child readers to
participate, not just in the characters' stories, but in the larger stories
of what it means to be human.
The above passages are taken from a chapter entitled "Peacocks, Dreams,
Quilts, and Honey: Patricia Polacco, A Woman's Voice of Remembrance," published
in my Ways of Knowing: Literature and the Intellectual Life of Children.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PATRICIA POLACCO'S WORKS
Polacco, Patricia. Appelemando's Dreams. New York: Philomel, 1991.
Polacco, Patricia. Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair.
New York: Philomel, 1996.
Polacco, Patricia. Babushka Baba Yaga. New York: New York: Philomel,
1993.
Polacco, Patricia. Babushka's Doll. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1990.
Polacco, Patricia. Babushka's Mother Goose. New York: Philomel,
1995.
Polacco, Patricia. The Bee Tree. New York: Philomel, 1993.
Polacco, Patricia. Boat Ride With Lillian Two Blossom. New York:
Philomel, 1988.
Polacco, Patricia. Chicken Sunday. New York: Philomel, 1992.
Polacco, Patricia. Firetalking. Photos by Lawrence Migdale.
Katonah: Owen, 1994.
Polacco, Patricia. I Can Hear the Sun: A Modern Myth. New York:
Philomel, 1996.
Polacco, Patricia. In Enzo's Splendid Gardens. New York: Philomel,
1997.
Polacco, Patricia. Just Plain Fancy. New York: Bantam, 1990.
Polacco, Patricia. The Keeping Quilt. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1988.
Polacco, Patricia. Meteor! New York: Dodd, 1987.
Polacco, Patricia. Mrs. Katz and Tush. New York: Bantam, 1992.
Polacco, Patricia. My Ol' Man. New York: Philomel, 1995.
Polacco, Patricia. My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Polacco, Patricia. Picnic At Mudsock Meadow. New York: Putnam,
1992.
Polacco, Patricia. Pink and Say. New York: Philomel, 1994.
Polacco, Patricia. Rechenka's Eggs. New York: Philomel, 1988.
Polacco, Patricia. Some Birthday! New York: Simon & Schuster,
1991.
Polacco, Patricia. Thunder Cake. New York: Philomel, 1990.
Polacco, Patricia. Tikvah Means Hope. New York: Doubleday, 1994.
Polacco, Patricia. The Trees of the Dancing Goats. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Polacco, Patricia. Uncle Vova's Tree. New York: Philomel, 1989.
Polacco, Patricia. "Words From Patricia Polacco. The Story Behind Pink
and Say." 2 pages dated 1994. [Attached to a personal letter from Refna
Wilkin, Executive Editor, Putnam dated 26-9-94.]
OTHER MEDIA BY AND ABOUT PATRICIA POLACCO
Babushka's Doll. Audio Cassette. New York: Scholastic, 1995.
Patricia Polacco: Dream Keeper. Video. Color, 23 Minutes. New
York: Philomel, 1996.
Parents Kids & Books: The Joys of Reading Together. Video.
Color, 30 Minutes. Dallas, TX: Kera Productions, 1993. (Available through
NCTE)
WORKS ABOUT PATRICIA POLACCO
Vandergrift, Kay E. "Peacocks, Dreams, Quilts, and Honey: Patricia Polacco,
A Woman's Voice of Remembrance," In Ways of Knowing: Literature and
the Intellectual Life of Children. Ed. By Kay E. Vandergrift. Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996, pp. 259-288.
Vandergrift, Kay E. "Patricia Polacco," in Twentieth-Century Children's
Writers. ed. by Laura Berger. 4th ed. Detroit: St. James, 1995. 759-760.
Created January 30, 1996, Last Updated September 4, 1997
by Kay E.Vandergrift