Polacco was born Patricia Barber on July 11, 1944 in Lansing, Michigan, the daughter of a teacher and a salesman turned talk show host.
[3] The family did not have a television and Polacco said on NPR, "our evenings were spent listening to glorious tales being told by the grandparents.
[4] The book Pink and Say comes from the life of a great-great-grandfather on her father's side, Sheldon Russell Curtis, who fought in the American Civil War and developed a moving friendship with a Black soldier named Pinkus Aylee.
[2] In 1949, following the death of Polacco's maternal grandmother, her family moved to Coral Gables for three years and then the Rockridge district of Oakland, California.
[1] Her marriage to Graeme L Blackman ended in divorce and she married chef and cooking instructor Enzo Mario Polacco on August 18, 1979.