Thank You, Mr. Falker

Polacco, Patricia. Thank You, Mr. Falker. Philomel Books: New York, 1998.

Patricia Polacco writes a picture book about real struggles that occurred during her childhood. In Thank you, Mr. Falker, a young girl, Trisha, feels like she is “dumb” because she cannot read like the other students. However with the help of a devoted teacher, Trisha finally has success in the classroom and learns to read.

In the beginning of the book Trisha receives a special gift from her grandfather, the knowledge to know the reading is sweet. After learning this, Trisha is very excited that she is going to learn to read. However, she quickly discovers that she cannot learn to read and recognize the letters like the other students in her class. Trisha moves from Michigan to California and hopes that at her new school she will not be teased for not knowing how to read. However, the teasing only gets worse. It is not until a caring, and affectionate teacher helps Trisha learn to recognize the letters and eventually read successfully.

After reading Thank You, Mr. Falker, I think it has became one of my favorite pieces of children’s literature. In such a short encouraging story there are many real life aspects for students to relate to as well as offering the notion that success can be reached. The real problems that are addressed in this book are issues that many students may face. Such as losing family members, trouble reading, bullying, moving, resource room help, achieving success. However, for me one of the most surprising and wonderful aspects of this book is the final page of the story when Polacco admits that Trisha is actually her and that great teachers like Mr. Falker really do exist. This piece of the text offers hopes to struggling students. Also, for students who do not have trouble reading or who bully, it teaches them a lesson about acceptance and struggles that other students must have the strength to overcome. I believe that awareness, understanding, and acceptance are promoted in this book for people with learning disabilities. According to the article, “Teaching Students About Learning Disabilities Through Children’s Literature” by Prater, Dyches, and Johnstun, Polacco’s book is a high quality piece of literature acceptance of learning disabilities is accepted. It is also a high quality piece of literature because it has strong literary features (characterization, setting, plot, point of view, etc) as well as learning disabilities or portrayed very positively.

I learned quite a bit about Polacco on her website (http://www.patriciapolacco.com/author/bio/bio.html). Besides the fact that she is from Michigan and grew up on a farm (just like Trisha), she did not read until the age of 14 and was diagnosed with dyslexia. Since Polacco has a learning disability herself, this piece of literature can be called an “insider” point of view.