  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 06/01/1998 K-Gr 4--Once more Polacco shares a personal story with engaging results. This moving saga of her struggle with a learning disability makes an inspiring picture book. Young Tricia wants desperately to read but when she starts school she finds that the words wiggle on the page. Teased by her classmates, she retreats into dreams and drawings. It's not until the family moves to California and Tricia has managed to reach the fifth grade that a new teacher finally recognizes her pain and distress. What's more, he does something about it. Without belaboring the point, the author clearly shows the ways that children internalize critical comments made by others and suffer for their differences. This touching story is accompanied by illustrations in Polacco's signature style. Youngsters, as well as adults, may find themselves choked up at the emotions so eloquently described in words and pictures. Yet, like the tears young Tricia cries at the end of the book, these are ultimately tears of joy. Thank you, indeed, Mr. Felker (the real name of the teacher involved) for making it all possible. Readers will be grateful for the chance to recognize, appreciate, and share in Polacco's talent and creativity.--Lisa Dennis, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA - Copyright 1998 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Bulletin for the Center... - 06/01/1998 Polacco again draws from her own life in this story about the struggle to learn to read. By first grade Trisha is in her first reader, but “when Trisha looked at a page, all she saw were wiggling shapes, and when she tried to sound out words, the other kids laughed at her.” She endures merciless teasing and the hopelessness of endless school days filled with reading inability for years until Mr. Falker, her squeaky-clean fifth-grade teacher, realizes Trisha’s problem. He enlists the help of a reading teacher and eventually, “almost as if it were magic, or as if light poured into her brain, the words and sentences started to take shape on the page as they never had before.” Period details of the 1950s add atmosphere to Polacco’s watercolors, which, with their characteristic gangly grace, are especially adept at visually capturing the little girl’s range of feelings. The lengthy text teeters on the sentimental but doesn’t waver in conveying the awful helplessness of a child’s unwarranted sense of “dumbness,” which understanding gives the book some bibliotherapeutic value. Read aloud or alone, the story should stir up empathy in the right direction, and because it is quite a moving tribute to Polacco’s real-life Mr. Falker (there’s a brief explanatory note on the last page), it is probably destined to become an end-of-the-year thank-you gift for someone’s favorite teacher. - Copyright 1998 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Booklist - 05/01/1998 Like many of Polacco's picture-book stories, this one is autobiographical. Who would believe that this gifted storyteller had started off with a serious learning disability? From kindergarten on, Trisha gets attention because she can draw; but she hides the fact that she can't read--all she sees on the page are wiggling shapes --until her fifth-grade teacher discovers Trisha's problem, gets her special help, and sets her free. That little girl was me, Polacco says in a final note. As always she tells the story with intense emotion: no understatement here; reading is torture. The big line-and-watercolor illustrations are bright with color and theatrical gesture, expressing the child's happiness with her grandparents in a family of readers, her fear and loneliness in the classroom (she hated hated hated school), her anguish when the kids jeer at her in the schoolyard, and her joy when finally she reads the words on the page (she was happy, so very happy). Trisha isn't idealized: we see her messy and desperate, poring over her books. This will encourage the child who feels like a failure and the teacher who cares. (Reviewed May 1, 1998) - Copyright 1998 Booklist. Loading...
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