SOURCE CITATION
"Patricia Maclachlan." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by HarperCollins.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Patricia MacLachlan is known for her award-winning picture books and novels for children, which include The Sick Day; Arthur, for the Very First Time; Sarah, Plain and Tall; and The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt. Populated by eccentric, endearing characters and often focusing on family relationships, MacLachlan's works are considered to be tender, humorous, and perceptive. Though she usually concentrates on the realities of everyday life in her books, MacLachlan has also penned more fanciful tales such as Tomorrow's Wizard and Moon, Stars, Frogs, and Friends. Many reviewers have praised MacLachlan's writing, indicating that her graceful, lucid prose is particularly suitable for reading aloud and that her warm, optimistic stories both enlighten and entertain young readers. Her work "shows a fine mastery for the difficult art of writing for preadolescents without flippancy, patronizing, or sentimentality," according to a contributor in the St. James Guide to Children's Writers.

Born in Wyoming and reared in Minnesota, MacLachlan was an only child. Her lack of siblings was offset by a strong relationship with her parents and an active imagination. MacLachlan's parents were teachers and 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. She wrote in Horn Book, "I can still feel the goose bumps as I, in the fur of Peter Rabbit, fled from the garden and Mr. 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. "Mary was a free spirit. 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. 'Don't sit there,' I'd cry with alarm. 'Mary's there!' One of my early memories is of my father, negotiating with Mary for the couch after dinner."

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 and the belief that "writers had all the answers," she confessed in Horn Book. She continued, remembering a school assignment: "I wrote a story on a three by five card. I still have it: 'My cats have names and seem happy. Often they play. The end.' My teacher was not impressed. 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 commented. "It dawned on me that what I really wanted to do was to write. 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, which are intended for a slightly older audience than her picture books. She 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 multi-leveled. . . . 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 great-aunt. Several reviews of the work were laudatory; critics particularly praised MacLachlan's realistic characters and her sincere yet entertaining look at childhood problems.

A character in Arthur, for the Very First Time provided the seed for MacLachlan's best-known work, Sarah, Plain and Tall. Aunt Mag in Arthur was a mail-order bride (a woman who meets her 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, Jacob, and his children, Caleb and Anna, on a midwestern prairie. When Sarah arrives the children take to her immediately and hope she'll 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 1986. Margery Fisher, a Growing Point contributor, deemed the book a "small masterpiece." Skylark continues the story of Sarah and her family. As a transplanted New Englander, Sarah is not fully accustomed to the hardships of prairie life, and during a severe drought, she takes the children for an extended visit with her aunts in Maine. Eventually, though, she is reunited with Jacob and recognizes that the midwestern frontier is where she belongs--and where their child will be born. In this "magnificent sequel," MacLachlan "neatly presents a very real setting and enormously powerful characters," commented a Publishers Weekly contributor, concluding: "There are worlds in MacLachlan's words."

MacLachlan also won praise for The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, about a musically inclined eleven-year-old girl from an eccentric family who has her first romance, with another musician, a boy from a more conventional household; each envies the other's way of life. "Patricia MacLachlan has created a wonderfully wise and funny story with such satisfying depths and unforgettable characters that one is reluctant to let it go," observed a Horn Book reviewer. Heather Vogel Frederick, writing in the New York Times Book Review, remarked: "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 her newest novel, The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt."

MacLachlan's other works include Journey and Baby, the former about a young boy named Journey who has been abandoned by his mother, the latter about a family taking in an abandoned infant after their own baby dies. Of Journey, Nancy Bray Cardozo wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "The language Ms. MacLachlan uses is beautiful, emotionally articulate. Journey speaks as though an eloquent adult is reminiscing about a childhood tragedy, the sadness still keenly remembered." Regarding Baby, a Publishers Weekly commentator observed, "MacLachlan's style remains masterly. It is difficult to read her sentences only once, and even more difficult to part from her novel."

As with the mail-order bride in Sarah, Plain and Tall, MacLachlan often gleans elements of her stories from personal experience. She once explained that "my books derive chiefly from my family life, both as a child with my own parents as well as with my husband and kids. The Sick Day . . . could happen in almost any family. Mama One, Mama Two comes from my experiences with foster mothers and the children they cared for." MacLachlan also noted in Horn Book that "the issues of a book are the same issues of life each day. What is real and what is not? How do you look at the world? How do I?" Sometimes the influence of the author's life on her work is unconscious; scenes from her childhood appear on her pages, episodes that she thought she had invented but that had actually happened. Once, she described an unusual tablecloth in one of her books, thinking she had made up the cloth's design; she later discovered that her mother had used a virtually identical tablecloth when MacLachlan was a child. Referring to such an instance in Junior Literary Guild, MacLachlan commented, "I realized that this is the magic. When you write you reach back somewhere in your mind or your heart and pull out things that you never even knew were there."

MacLachlan is heartened by children's reactions to her work; she once noted that "it's hugely gratifying to know that kids all over read what I write." Affirming the importance of encouraging young writers, the author visits schools to speak with students and give writing workshops. "In my experience, children believe that writers are like movie stars. I am often asked if I arrived in a limousine," MacLachlan remarked. "I admit that sometimes I'm a little flattered at the exalted idea kids have about writers. But more importantly, I feel it's crucial that kids who aspire to write understand that I have to rewrite and revise as they do. Ours is such a perfectionist society--I see too many kids who believe that if they don't get it right the first time, they aren't writers."

When asked what advice she would have for beginning writers, MacLachlan commented in Language Arts, "I would certainly say only write books for children if you really love children's books and want to do it. Writing for children is special because I think children read with a great true belief in what they're reading. The other thing is to read. One must understand the far reaches of children's books because they're really about many of the same subjects as adults are concerned with. Don't be condescending. I hate the didacticism that sometimes comes through in children's books. I would read and read and read. There is no better model than a good book."

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born March 3, 1938, in Cheyenne, WY; daughter of Philo (a teacher) and Madonna (a teacher; maiden name, Moss) Pritzkau; married Robert MacLachlan (a clinical psychologist), April 14, 1962; children: John, Jamie, Emily. Education: University of Connecticut, B.A., 1962. Addresses: Home--Williamsburg, MA. Office--Department of Education, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063.

CAREER
Bennett Junior High School, Manchester, CT, English teacher, 1963-79; Smith College, Northampton, MA, visiting lecturer, 1986--; writer. Lecturer; social worker; teacher of creative writing workshops for adults and children. Children's Aid Family Service Agency, board member, 1970-80.