When was patricia maclachlan born

I could see all of us: Papa, who couldn't always say the things he felt; Caleb, who said everything; and Sarah, who didn't know that she had changed us all. See all Patricia MacLachlan's quotes ». Topics Mentioning This Author. Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars.

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Patricia MacLachlan Author. March 3 , age Cheyenne , Wyoming , United States. Patricia MacLachlan is still Alive? Authors Revealed: Patricia MacLachlan. Patricia MacLachlan. Meet Patricia MacLachlan. Patricia MacLachlan Interview - Oct. Aleali May, 29 blogger. Hang T Nguyen, 28 blogger. Jennifer Nielsen, 50 young adult author. Kody Keplinger, 30 novelist. Influencer Opportunity If you are a model, tiktoker, instagram Influencer We connect brands with social media talent to create quality sponsored content " Join Here ".

MacLachlan's parents were teachers and they encouraged her to read; her mother urged her to "read a book and find out who you are," the author related in Horn Book. She did read voraciously, sometimes discussing and acting out scenes in books with her parents.

McGregor—played with great ferocity by my father—to the coat closet…. Some days I would talk my father into acting out the book a dozen times in a row, with minor changes here and there or major differences that reversed the plot. MacLachlan was also kept company by her imaginary friend, Mary, "who was real enough for me to insist that my parents set a place for her at the table," the author recalled in Horn Book.

She talked me into drawing a snail on the living room wall, larger and larger, so that the room had to be repainted….

My parents tolerated Mary with good humor, though I'm sure it was trying. Mary was ever present. Though she was creative enough to invent a friend and concoct elaborate fantasies, MacLachlan did not write stories as a child. The author remembers being intimidated by the intensely personal nature of writing. In an autobiographical essay in Authors and Adults for Young Adults , she confessed: "I was afraid of putting my own feelings and thoughts on a page for everyone to read.

This is still a scary part of writing. I still have it: 'My cats have names and seem happy. Often they play. The end. I was discouraged, and I wrote in my diary: 'I shall try not to be a writer. Indeed, MacLachlan did not begin to write until years later, at the age of thirty-five. Married with children of her own, she kept busy by working with foster mothers at a family services agency and spending time with her family.

As her children grew older, though, she "felt a need to do something else—go to graduate school or go back to teaching, perhaps," she once noted. How would I ever have the courage, I wondered. It was very scary to find myself in the role of student again, trying to learn something entirely new. MacLachlan started her successful writing career by creating picture books.

Her first, The Sick Day , details how a little girl with a cold is cared for by her father. Another work, Through Grandpa's Eyes , explores how a young boy is taught by his blind grandfather to "see" the world through his other senses.

Mama One, Mama Two , a somewhat later book, takes a frank yet comforting look at mental illness and foster parenting. In it a girl is taken in by "Mama Two" while waiting for her natural mother, "Mama One," to recover from psychological problems. MacLachlan, praised for the simplicity and sensitivity she brings to these stories, is especially noted for her deft handling of unconventional subject matter.

Encouraged by her editor, MacLachlan also started to write novels intended for a slightly older audience than her picture books. She once commented on the differences between the two genres: "It is more difficult to write a picture book than a novel. A good picture book is much like a poem: concise, rich, bare-boned, and multileveled….

When I want to stretch into greater self-indulgence, I write a novel. MacLachlan's first novel, Arthur, for the Very First Time , tells of a young boy's emotional growth during the summer he spends with his great-uncle and greataunt. I knew I was writing about a lot of me, a lot of my family, a lot of what I was thinking about at the time. Evaluations of Arthur, for the Very First Time were favorable, as critics commended MacLachlan's realistic characters and her sincere yet entertaining look at childhood problems.

Zena Sutherland echoed the sentiment in her review of Arthur, for the Very First Time in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books , commenting: "The story has a deep tenderness, a gentle humor, and a beautifully honed writing style. MacLachlan again addresses a child's resistance to change in her second novel, Cassie Binegar. Part of a large, somewhat disorganized, but happy family, Cassie finds herself longing for the serenity found in her friend Mary Margaret's home.

Growing up is suddenly a much more difficult task, as Cassie begins to self-consciously compare herself and her family with other examples around her. At the core of most of her problems is a fear of change, and this comes to the fore when the family moves and Cassie's aging grandmother, among other relatives, comes to stay with the Binegars. Horn Book reviewer Ann A. Flowers described MacLachlan's text in Cassie Binegar as "elegant and evocative.

Aunt Mag in Arthur was a mail-order bride a woman who, in past times, attained a husband by answering a newspaper advertisement , as was a distant relative of MacLachlan's. In Sarah, Plain and Tall the title character answers a newspaper advertisement and as a result goes to visit a lonely widower and his children on the midwestern prairie. When Sarah arrives, the children take to her immediately and hope she will stay and marry their father.

Considered a poignant and finely wrought tale, Sarah, Plain and Tall garnered widespread critical acclaim; MacLachlan received a Newbery Medal for the novel in Margery Fisher, a Growing Point contributor, deemed the book a "small masterpiece. So the fact of Sarah was there for years, though the book began as books often do, when the past stepped on the heels of the present; or backward, when something now tapped something then.

This trip made the connection between the past and the present more evident to both MacLachlan and her mother, who was beginning to lose her memory because of Alzheimer's disease. Most of all I wished to write my mother's story with spaces, like the prairie, with silences that could say what words could not…. But books, like children, grow and change, borrowing bits and pieces of the lives of others to help make them who and what they are.

And in the end we are all there, my mother, my father, my husband, my children, and me. We gave my mother better than a piece of her past. We gave her the same that Anna and Caleb and Jacob received—a family. Eleven-year-old Minna, teetering on the edge of adolescence, finds herself confronted with numerous changes as she strives to develop a vibrato.

While she practices her cello to attain this dream, Minna also longs for her eccentric mother, a writer, to be more like a "mother. Lucas, on the other hand, is fascinated with the unusual ways of Minna's family, and the two experience their first romance. Heather Vogel Frederick, writing in the New York Times Book Review , declared: "If writers of children's fiction were organized into a guild, the title of master craftsman would be bestowed upon Patricia MacLachlan.

Her crisp, elegant prose and superb storytelling ability … grace … The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt.