Fionas lace by patricia polacco biography

An Irish family stays together with the help of Fiona's talent for making one-of-a-kind lace in this heartwarming immigration story.

Polacco weaves her themes well: immigrant history, family lore, poverty and oppression, and hope for the future.

In Patricia Polacco's picture book Fiona's Lace, Fiona and her family immigrate from Ireland to America for a better life.

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About the Holiday

First celebrated in 1991, Irish-American Heritage Month commemorates the many contributions of Irish immigrants in America’s early days and the continuing influence Irish-Americans have on the arts, politics, sports, business, education, and all areas of American culture. The month of March was chosen to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, one of the most enthusiastically honored holidays, with parades, parties, and ceremonies held in cities and town all across the country.

By Patricia Polacco

In Fiona’s Lace author-illustrator Patricia Polacco weaves a tale of family love and America’s early immigrant heritage that is as intricate and lovely as the lace the family makes. The story begins in Ireland, where Fiona and her sister Ailish live with their muther and da. They live happily in Glen Kerry, where their father works in the textile mill and their mother teaches Fiona her art of lace making.

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Fiona's Lace

June 29, 2017

Another spectacular offering from Patricia Polacco, her Fiona's Lace is once again based on the author's own family history, and this time, her father's Irish great-grandmother Fiona (who emigrated with her parents and younger sister in the latter part of the 19th century, with the family settling in Chicago). And (like usually with Patricia Polacco) I with this sweet tale just so much cherish the presented narrative, how Fiona's lovingly nurtured and parentally supported talent for making fine Irish lace and the remembered family lore of her father courting her mother by following a trail of lace signposts, not only saves the lives of Fiona and Ailish during the Great Fire of Chicago, but then also causes their frantic parents to be able find them (just like the father followed the tied lace left by the mother as a sort of romantic treasure hunt, so do Fiona's parents follow the charred and sooty lace fragments left by Fiona to reunite the family).

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FIONA'S LACE

Rabe follows a ung girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.

The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator fryst vatten a vit brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made