Beginning the Strega Nona Blitz

I'm on a bit of a Tomie dePaola binge since reading Tomie dePaola: His Art and His Stories. Though I love his autobiographical stories, my introduction to dePaola's work came when I was teaching 1st grade many moons ago and came be way of the delightful tale of Strega Nona.

He has written quite a few books about Strega Nona and her friends:

• Strega Nona: An Original Tale, 1975 (Caldecott Honor Book)
• Big Anthony and the Magic Ring, 1979
• Strega Nona's Magic Lessons, 1982
• Merry Christmas, Strega Nona, 1986
• Strega Nona Meets Her Match, 1993
• Strega Nona, Her Story, 1996
• Big Anthony, His Story, 1998
• Strega Nona Takes a Vacation, 2000
• Brava, Strega Nona: A Heartwarming Pop-Up Book, 2008
• Strega Nona's Harvest, 2009
• Strega Nona's Gift, 2011
• Strega Nona Does It Again, 2013
• The Magical World of Strega Nona: A Treasury, 2015 includes:

• Strega Nona
• Strega Nona Meets Her Match
• Strega Nona, Her Story
• Strega Nona Takes a Vacation
• Strega Nona's Harvest
• Strega Nona's Gift
• New Introductions to Each Story
• Map of Strega Nona's Town
• Family-Friendly Recipes
• An Original Lullaby with Sheet Music
• A CD of the Lullaby, and Tomie Reading Strega Nona, Her Story

• Strega Nona and Her Tomatoes, 2017
• Strega Nona and the Twins, 2017
• Strega Nona: A Classic Board Book, 2017
• Strega Nona's Magic Lessons (new publisher, new design) (December 5, 2017)
• Strega Nona's Magic Ring (formerly Big Anthony and the Magic Ring) (new publisher, new design) (March 27, 2018)

This list would be a great starting place for an author study on dePaola and/or a comprehensive list for a Strega Nona and friends character study. Big Anthony's character can open up conversations about following directions, being honest, and work ethic. Bambolona's traits are the complete opposite, which makes a great compare/contrast lesson.

Today, I'm going to cover Strega Nona, Strega Nona's Magic Lessons, and Strega Nona's Harvest. In future posts, I'll cover several others.

Strega Nona - Strega Nona (grandma witch) is Calabria's resident healer. She is so busy that she hires Big Anthony to help her with the chores around her little house. Little does she know, Big Anthony rarely does anything right. Strega Nona prepares pasta for supper with her magic pasta pot, and Big Anthony becomes obsessed with the pot, but he is not allowed to use it. When she leaves town, Big Anthony, of course, just HAS to try the pasta pot, with disastrous results.

Storyline Online - Mary Steenburgen reads Strega Nona. She makes the pasta song come alive by singing it and accompanying herself on the accordian.

Tomie dePaola tells how this Strega Nona story came to be.

Strega Nona's Magic Lessons - Bambolona, the baker's daughter has been working for Strega Nona for quite a while and now she wants to learn magic. Strega Nona happily agrees to teach her, and Big Anthony wants in on the lessons. When Strega Nona rebuffs him, he storms off and asks the baker to let him learn HIS secrets. Being Big Anthony, he makes a mess of the bakery and gets sent away. As he mopes through the town square, telling everyone how upset he is that Strega Nona won't give him magic lessons, someone mentions that men can't be stregas. So Big Anthony disguises himself as a woman, returns to Strega Nona's home, and is able to join the magic lessons. It does NOT go well.

Strega Nona's Harvest - Strega Nona teaches Bambolona and Big Anthony how to plant a garden, but naturally Big Anthony doesn't like having to make straight furrows and plant like seeds together. He wants to do things his own way - the lazy way ;) and though he follows directions for Strega Nona's garden he decides he will plant his own garden to show her that being fussy isn't necessary. Unexpectedly, Big Anthony's garden does fairly well, but not surprisingly, it creates complications for Strega Nona. With her usual aplomb, Strega Nona solves the problem.

Check your local library for these titles. Library tip: check to see if your library is connected to any other library systems. Our community has a fairly small library, but titles can be requested from the other branches in our regional library network. 

AND...anyone with a library card from our Kitsap Regional Library system can take it to a Seattle library and get a library card to borrow materials from the Seattle network as well. Your community may have the same type of agreement with surrounding areas, so be sure to ask!

Build your Strega Nona library at home via Amazon:

• Strega Nona
• Strega Nona's Magic Lessons
• Strega Nona's Harvest

Next time: Strega Nona Does it Again and Strega Nona takes a Vacation

Jim Henson Company - Strega Nona tells Tomie dePaola a story about her birthday

• Click here to read "More Strega Nona Love" post
• Click here to read "Wrapping Up the Strega Nona Blitz" post.
• Click here to read "Merry Christmas, Strega Nona" post.

Avoid the Summer Slide!

I cannot say enough about how important it is for your child to keep READING during the summer.  Some families take the attitude that their children should not have to do anything academic during the summer. After all, summer is the time for fun, right?  Right.  However, I can't help but point out that reading is a part of living, not just a part of school.

I don't know about you, but I read constantly - I read street signs, grocery lists, menus, directions, Facebook posts, text messages, recipes, catalogs, Tweets, magazines, poems, advertisements, scriptures, and the list goes on.  I am able to do this because my parents read to me, they read with me, they took me to the library, they let me order from the monthly book order at school, and they read in front of me, modeling how important it is to continually feed the mind with nutritious, delicious morsels - even during the summer.  Literacy knows no season.

Nostalgic Note:  Every week during the summer, my mom took my sisters and I to the public library.  We were allowed to check out as many books as we would like and I took advantage of that, walking out the door each week with 10-15 books.  You would have thought I'd won the lottery, I could hardly contain my excitement and was anxious to get home, crack open those covers and begin devouring the adventures inside.

Sometimes I selected books I'd read before - yes, I am one of THOSE people - I love to reread favorites and revisit the worlds of my fictional friends.  I read the Little House books until the covers fell off (my own copies, of course).  Other oft-repreated favorites included the Ginnie and Geneva series and the Cherry Ames series.  If you have a daughter in the 9-13 age range, see if your public library has these.  Neither of these series are classics by any means, but they struck my fancy and I read them over and over.

Most public libraries have summer reading programs and many have recommended reading lists on their websites.  Get your child involved in your library's summer reading program!  Most libraries have wonderful kick-off events, great prizes for those who participate and a fun end-of-summer party.

Be sure to keep current on what's happening at your local library by checking their website once a week. Most have calendars, pages for special events, book club information, etc., all posted online.  One of my favorite libraries is a great resource for recommended titles - Provo City Library.  Their neighbor, the Orem City Library has staff recommendations alongside printable booklists.  I know these libraries well because those were the libraries I took my own children to every week during the summer.  My current local library, El Dorado County Library, has a list of links to free ebooks, sites about reading, books, upcoming sequels, etc...  Every library with a website will have a different way of sharing information to encourage their patrons to keep reading.  If your library doesn't have an online presence, I encourage you to advocate for it.

My School Library

My school has one of the best school librarians I have ever seen.  Other schools may have more space, more books, more seating, more whatever.  But no one else has Mrs. Book!  She is wonderful  - patient, kind, knowledgeable, and she always has fun contests and programs going on to keep our kiddos wanting to be in the library.

These flowers are made from the winning bookmarks from our annual Design-A-Bookmark Contest.  The students receive a blackline and crystal clear instructions.  Anyone who wants to participate, draws a cover for their favorite book on the blackline and submits it.  One winner is chosen from each grade level and she arranges for them to receive 50 full-color copies of their bookmark to share with family and friends.

She's always got a fun author display or two - Dr. Seuss is a favorite.  She also makes sure she has topical displays and if a grade level is doing book reports from a certain genre, she creates a display and goes out of her way to make sure that genre is easily accessible.

Meet Spitfire and Red, our library mascots - two frogs, whose presence, incidentally, require the students to use quiet voices so they don't get frightened.  Genius.  Above our dear froggies is a display of the nominated titles for the California Young Readers Medal.  Each year, she reads one title per week to the students during their library time.  At the end of the story, each class puts an object that represents the story into the Mystery Box.  When the class returns in subsequent weeks, they take each item out of the Mystery Box, repeat the title, give a quick summary and listen to the next story.  When all the nominees have been read, the students vote and our school choice is compared to the state choice.  The kids love it!

Mrs. Book doing her thing with my class.  Love these kids!

She makes it easy for the kids to find what they want - no aggravating "look it up" attitude.

She creates welcoming spaces throughout our tiny library.

Mrs. Book also runs an Accelerated Reader contest - my class won every month in the 2nd grade "division" :) so we got to hang the AR "bling" sign in our room and have our picture taken for display.  She awards Rock Star Reader awards each month to the student in each grade who has read the most words (determined by AR) and those students pose with giant blow-up electric guitars for pictures that cover the wall of the computer lab next door to the library.,  Mrs. Book has a special shelf for our Principal's Picks.  Any student who checks out and reads one of Mrs. Miller's picks gets to put his/her name in a golden treasure box and one name is drawn each month to receive a special prize.

This is just the tip of the library iceberg.  She is always coming up with fun, creative ways to welcome our students into the library and encourage them to read.  She hosts a Scholastic Book Fair twice a year to earn funds for our library, gets teacher input in order to add the best possible educational dvds to our collection, spearheads the Six Flags reading incentive, and more.

I love her Library Aide program - students must be trained to check in returned books properly using the scanner and to shelve books.  Once they pass their training, they may come in at recess anytime they wish to help her with those tasks.  What a boon for those students who don't enjoy the playground!

Here's to Mrs. Book and her counterparts all over the world - we need you, we appreciate you, we hope to always have you in our schools.  Thanks, Vickie.  You're the best!