FIRETALKING

In the useful Meet the Author series, a particularly appealing entry from an author/illustrator whose picture books have grown directly out of a life experience that has included shuttling between divorced parents, an old-country "babushka," growing up in a mixed California neighborhood, and marriage to a Jewish Italian. Polacco also, in this lively, forthright self-portrait, describes overcoming a learning disability and going on to get a doctorate in art history and also her methods of working, both the nitty gritty and the inspirational ("I listen to music and let my imagination soar. I take rocking so seriously I have at least one or two rockers in every room"). Succinct and remarkably well detailed. (Autobiography. 6-10)