CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 1998)
Before she started school, Trisha looked forward to learning how to read more than anything else. But in first grade, when all her classmates are learning to read, she finds that she can't. Each year her problem gets worse and worse and, although she struggles to keep it a secret, she begins to think of herself as stupid and ugly. It isn't until Trisha is in fifth grade that she has a teacher who discovers her secret and helps her learn to read. An autobiographical story shows the frustration and determination of child who's different, and offers a tender portrait of the real-life teacher who made a difference in her life. CCBC categories: Picture Books for Older Children. 1998, Philomel, 40 pages, $16.99. Ages 6-10.

Hazel Rochman (Booklist, May 1, 1998 (Vol. 94, No. 17))
Like many of Polacco's picture-book stories, this one is autobiographical. Who would believe that this gifted storyteller had started off with a serious learning disability? From kindergarten on, Trisha gets attention because she can draw; but she hides the fact that she can't read--all she sees on the page are "wiggling shapes" --until her fifth-grade teacher discovers Trisha's problem, gets her special help, and sets her free. "That little girl was me," Polacco says in a final note. As always she tells the story with intense emotion: no understatement here; reading is "torture." The big line-and-watercolor illustrations are bright with color and theatrical gesture, expressing the child's happiness with her grandparents in a family of readers, her fear and loneliness in the classroom ("she hated hated hated school"), her anguish when the kids jeer at her in the schoolyard, and her joy when finally she reads the words on the page ("she was happy, so very happy"). Trisha isn't idealized: we see her messy and desperate, poring over her books. This will encourage the child who feels like a failure and the teacher who cares. Category: For the Young. 1998, Putnam/Philomel, $15.99. Ages 5-9.