Patricia Polacco
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40 free Patricia Polacco trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Patricia Polacco did not publish a book until her forties, and she has barely stopped since. Nearly every story she tells is true, or close to it: borrowed from her grandparents' farm in Michigan, from the neighbors she grew up beside in California, and from the tales her relatives on both sides of the family told at night. This quiz gathers the fun facts fans ask about most. Some questions cover her own life: the school years she struggled through, the teachers who changed everything, her unusual path into picture books and the quirks of her farm today. Others test how well you remember the books themselves, from Thunder Cake and Chicken Sunday to Pink and Say, The Keeping Quilt and The Junkyard Wonders. It is written for teachers planning an author study, for students who have just finished one, and for anyone who grew up with her books on the shelf. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which teacher, honored in the title of a Patricia Polacco picture book, first noticed she could not read?
Mr. Falker
Mr. Falker stopped the classmates who teased her and brought in a reading specialist to help. Polacco thanked him decades later with the 1998 book Thank You, Mr. Falker.
Q 02Which condition, finally diagnosed when she was 14, had kept a young Patricia Polacco from keeping up at school?
Dyslexia
Dyslexia went unnoticed for years, so classmates teased her while she hid it behind her drawing. She says the same wiring that scrambled words also let her draw unusually well.
Q 03What did the space rock that crashed onto the Michigan farm of Patricia Polacco's grandparents later become?
The family headstone
The family headstone in the village cemetery is that very rock. Polacco retold the night it fell in a picture book and takes a piece of it along on school visits.
Q 04Which unusual ingredient from the garden goes into the cake Grandma bakes in Patricia Polacco's Thunder Cake?
Tomatoes
Tomatoes join the eggs and milk the pair gather while a storm rolls in, keeping a frightened girl too busy to hide. The book ends with the recipe itself.
Q 05Patricia Polacco credits her vivid imagination to a storytelling childhood spent without which household item?
A television
A television never entered the house, so evenings went to her grandparents' tales instead. She still tells young writers to switch off their screens and listen to the voice inside.
Q 06Which Muppets puppeteer became Patricia Polacco's friend at her California high school?
Frank Oz
Frank Oz shared her high school before joining Jim Henson's Muppets at 19. He went on to perform Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster and Bert.
Q 07Pink and Say, a story handed down through Patricia Polacco's family, follows two teenage soldiers in which war?
The Civil War
The Civil War throws together Say, a wounded white farm boy from Ohio, and Pink, a Black soldier who carries him to safety. Say was Polacco's own ancestor and passed the story down.
Q 08Children's author Patricia Polacco has told fans she can sometimes be found out riding which motorcycle?
A Harley-Davidson
A Harley-Davidson is one of her ways to unwind between books. Her other habit is walking her goats and lamb on leashes, which she says makes the neighbors laugh out loud.
Q 09In Patricia Polacco's Mrs. Katz and Tush, what kind of animal is Tush, the pet Larnel brings his widowed neighbor?
A cat
A cat without a tail is the gift, and Mrs. Katz accepts only if Larnel will help look after her. Years later his own children call the old woman their grandmother.
Q 10In Patricia Polacco's Just Plain Fancy, the strange egg found by Amish sisters Naomi and Ruth hatches into what?
A peacock
A peacock is far too showy for a community that prizes plainness, so Naomi fears he will be shunned. The elders rule instead that such beauty is simply how he was made.
Q 11In which Michigan city was children's author and illustrator Patricia Polacco born?
Lansing
Lansing was home only briefly: her parents divorced when she was three, and she moved to her grandmother's farm. Her mother was a teacher and her father a salesman turned talk-show host.
Q 12Michigan-born Patricia Polacco traveled to which country to earn her master's degree and doctorate?
Australia
Australia is where she finished her studies, at universities in Melbourne, and where she met the man whose surname she now signs on every book.
Q 13Patricia Polacco took her surname from her second husband, Enzo, who made his living in which profession?
Chef
Chef and cooking teacher Enzo Polacco came from Trieste, Italy, and survived the Holocaust as a boy. She set her rhyming romp In Enzo's Splendid Gardens in a restaurant.
Q 21Which book did Patricia Polacco sell first, after carrying her portfolio around New York publishers with her mother?
Meteor!
Meteor! sold in 1987, the year she and her mother hauled an eighty-pound portfolio from publisher to publisher. She had only begun writing books at 41.
Q 22Before writing for children, Patricia Polacco earned a doctorate in which academic subject?
Art history
Art history, with a focus on Russian and Greek icons, led to work restoring old pieces for museums. She has also served as a consultant on icon restoration.
Q 23Which twentieth-century American illustrator has Patricia Polacco named as her greatest artistic hero?
Norman Rockwell
Q 14Patricia Polacco's father's family, storytellers like her mother's Russian side, came to America from which country?
Ireland
Ireland's County Limerick was home to her father's people, and she spent childhood summers with those grandparents. Her mother's family were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Ukraine.
Q 15After leaving Michigan as a child, Patricia Polacco grew up in which California city, the setting of Chicken Sunday?
Oakland
Oakland was her home for nearly 37 years, on a street in the Rockridge district. She loved that her neighbors there came in every color, idea and religion.
Q 16In Patricia Polacco's Chicken Sunday, what do three children hope to buy for Miss Eula, the grandmother they adore?
An Easter hat
An Easter hat in a shop window is her dream, so the children decorate eggs to sell there. The shopkeeper, moved by their effort, ends up giving her the hat for free.
Q 17In Patricia Polacco's Rechenka's Eggs, what kind of wounded creature is Rechenka, nursed back to health by Babushka?
A goose
A goose that falls injured from the sky, Rechenka smashes the eggs Babushka spent all winter painting for a festival in Moscow. She makes amends by laying a dozen dazzlingly decorated ones.
Q 18Which Jewish holiday do Larnel and his elderly neighbor share in Patricia Polacco's Mrs. Katz and Tush?
Passover
Passover, she tells him, celebrates freedom, and she points out that her people were once enslaved just as his were. It is her first one since her husband died.
Q 19In Polacco's My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother, young Patricia finally outlasts her brother on which carnival ride?
The merry-go-round
The merry-go-round wins her the contest and a dizzy fall, and it is her brother who carries her home and runs for the doctor. She had made a wish the night before to beat him at anything.
Q 20In Polacco's Rotten Richie and the Ultimate Dare, Trisha's hockey-playing brother accepts a dare to perform in what?
A ballet recital
A ballet recital is the dare, and he accepts on one condition: she must play in a hockey game. She scores the winning goal, and he nails his dance.
Norman Rockwell, she wrote, is someone every illustrator has studied and copied at some point. Her childhood favorites also included Beatrix Potter, Wanda Gág and Dr. Seuss.
Q 24The Butterfly, based on the wartime memories of Patricia Polacco's aunt Monique, is set in which occupied country?
France
France under Nazi occupation is where young Monique finds a Jewish girl hidden in her own cellar. Her mother had been sheltering the family in secret, and the girls play together at night.
Q 25In Polacco's The Lemonade Club, what does a whole fifth-grade class do to support Marilyn through cancer treatment?
Shave their heads
They shave their heads so Marilyn is not the only bald one when she returns from chemotherapy. The story is true, drawn from the life of a friend of Polacco's daughter.
Q 26In Polacco's The Junkyard Wonders, what do Trisha and her special-class friends find at a scrapyard and repair?
A plane
A plane is what Trisha's group restores, and the whole class buys an engine for it. The book grew out of a real class Polacco was placed in as a girl.
Q 27In Polacco's Mr. Lincoln's Way, the principal reaches school bully Eugene through the boy's love of which creatures?
Birds
Birds fascinate Eugene, whose grandfather taught him about them, so the principal puts him to work in the school's new atrium. Together they lead a brood of ducklings to a pond.
Q 28In Polacco's Babushka Baba Yaga, the lonely witch of Russian folklore disguises herself because she longs for what?
A grandchild
A grandchild to love is all she wants, so she covers her tall pointed ears and becomes little Victor's carer. She later saves him from wolves and is welcomed back by the village.
Q 29In Patricia Polacco's Emma Kate, the surprise ending reveals that the story's narrator is really which animal?
An elephant
An elephant has been telling the story all along, and the little girl called Emma Kate is its imaginary friend. Polacco dedicated the book to Dr. Seuss's Horton.
Q 30In Polacco's Ginger and Petunia, which animal dresses up as her pianist owner and fools the whole town?
A pig
A pig named Petunia steps in when the house sitter never arrives, even teaching Ginger's piano students. She also exposes a forged painting at a museum without being found out.