I really like Patricia Polacco and all of her books. I love how her books are all based on things that have happened in her life. This book tells her life story and how she grew up. Patricia had learning disabilities, yet she is a wonderful writer and reader now. She is a true definition of an inspiration. I really like Polacco and this book made me like her even more. ( )

I read this book as part of an author study on Patricia Polacco. It was a nice to have the background information. It helped to see the connections between her life and her stories, especially since many of her books are stories based on people and events in her life. She has some photographs in this autobiography that show up as illustrations in some of her books. One thing to note is that this book does not have many features of nonfiction text. There is no table of contents, headings, or an index. This makes seeking out specific information somewhat difficult. It's written more as a narrative but it does cover a pretty broad spectrum of information about her life.

In Firetalking, Patricia Polacco outlines the events of her own life as a children's author. She was born on Jully 11, 1944 in Lansing, Michigan. Her mother's side of the family is Russian, while her father's side is Irish, and tells the story of how her mother's family came to America in one of her books. As a child, her grandparents would sit her in front of their fireplace to eat snacks and listen to their storytelling, called "firetalking". Polacco realized as a child that she suffered from dyslexia, but pushed on and eventually graduated with a PhD in art history. All of Polacco's stories are based off of her life from childhood to present day. Now, she has grown to be like her grandprarents: firetalking with her own family in front of the fireplace.
"Firetalking" has a lot of good pictures that help illustrate features of Polacco's life, especially those cultural elements that some people wouldn't catch onto such as the Pysanky eggs. I appreciate that pictures of her own books were included to show examples of how she'd written about the mentioned events in her life. However, the flow of the book felt very off, to me. Instead of a nice chronological retelling of her life, Polacco seems the prefer retelling her story in snippets of events and people. This made the book seem more like a random stream of facts rather then a well constructed and engaging story. However, the detail she gives in the explanations of her culture and her husband's culture is much appreciated. This is a good book for someone who's already read and fallen in love with Polacco's work, but I'd say it'd be hard for someone who'd never heard of her to really appreciate. ( )

It is a nice picture book full of real photos of Polacco and her family. Things that you read about in this books, you will see in a photo instead of a drawing. That part was nice to me. Beside, the language is easy to understand and there are some humors around Polacco’s words. I think she must be a woman who is kind, fascinated, peaceful. Firetalking describes her family and her work. But in this book you will not feel anything literary or formal, it seems like just someone who is talking her own story in a very, very gentle circumstance. It makes me feel relax, meanwhile, I am able to learn so much about her like her important books, her attitude towards her work, etc. as well.
Biography: Its own definition: bio=life, graphy=writing. This specialized variety of nonfiction writing focuses on the lives of human beings- usually, people who are famous. ( )

this book is about Patricia Polacco's life, from when she was a young girl to her later years. The book talks about her family and her grandparents. This book helped me get to know Polacco better. It also helped me write the bibliography for my author brochure. ( )