Strega Nona

Stega Nona written and illustrated by Tomie de Paola

Picture Book for ages 4-10

5 stars

Strega Nona, meaning “Grandma Witch” is a magical old woman who offers magical maladies for the townspeople when they are having troubles. When Strega Nona hires a man named Big Anthony to help her around the house, he sees Strega Nona’s magical pot that cooks pasta on his own and tries to prove it to the whole town when Strega Nona is away. This turns into a disaster in which only Strega Nona can fix with her magic.

                Strega Nona represents a fantasy book filled with magic. This story reminds me of something that would be a folk tale because of the Italian, old-time culture depicted in the illustrations as well as the magical maladies that are described, as I think town “witches” actually were believed to exist way back when. Also, the illustrations really show the emotions of the characters and provide extra details that the test does not. When Strega Nona hires Big Anthony to help her out around the house, Strega Nona tells Big Anthony that her one rule is that he may never touch the pasta pot. Big Anthony uses some Italian words in his dialogue. This in itself brings the Italian culture to the story. One night when Strega Nona was cooking dinner for Big Anthony and herself, Big Anthony saw her singing to her pasta pot and not using any utensils to cook the pasta. After her singing, the pasta pot was full of pasta! Big Anthony could not keep this secret, and based on the illustration, Big Anthony was so anxious to tell people that he was shaking. This is one of many ways that the illustrations show more than what the text says, as from the picture of Big Anthony jumping for joy about this new secret, it foreshadows that he is not going to keep this magical pasta pot a secret. As the story unfolds, Strega Nona leaves for a day, and Big Anthony takes his opportunity to show the doubtful townspeople that he wasn’t lying when he told everyone about the magical pasta pot. He remembers the song just as Strega Nona sang it and the pasta pot cooked enough pasta to feed the whole town. One thing Big Anthony failed to see Strega Nona do was blow three kisses onto the pot when she wanted it to stop. Due to this failure, pasta never stopped coming out of the pot and it started to take over the town. Once Strega Nona returned, she quickly stopped the pot from making pasta and saved the whole town. When the whole town wanted to punish Big Anthony harshly, Strega Nona proclaimed “ ‘The punishment must fit the crime’ “, so she made Big Anthony eat all of the pasta that was made.

                This story is filled with magic from the words on the page, to the pictures, and to the plot itself. This book would make a perfect read-aloud for any class of students. The story line is captivating. Humor leaks out of the text and illustrations, which make it fun to listen to as well as fun for children to look at the illustrations. One thing this book reminds me of is the story of Adam and Eve where God creates these two humans and places them in the Garden of Eden, which provides for them everything that they could possibly need and more. The one rule God had was to not eat anything from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they could eat from any other tree in the whole place.  This rule is similar to that of Strega Nona, she said she would pay Big Anthony, feed him, and provide him shelter, with one rule which was to not touch her pasta pot. In both stories, the characters gave into the temptations and broke the rules, both resulting in punishment.

                If I were teaching in a parochial school, I would use this connection between Strega Nona and Adam and Eve and make it into a lesson. Since that is probably not an accepted lesson in the public school system, I will use this book in a different form. Most likely I would use this story as a read-aloud because the language, illustrations, humorous storyline and display of culture are so wonderful that I think my students would love this story. According to Mem Fox, reading aloud is a very important part in developing reading skills in children. The words sing out from the page, so using the techniques of being expressive, being animated, and using a variety of vocal tones as described in Fox’s book Reading Magic will even more life to this story and will hopefully make an impact on my students and their reading abilities. Also explained by Fox was the importance of making read-aloud a regular part of everyday. This is something that I plan to do in my classroom. Read-aloud will take place at least once a day, with a picture book or novel and Strega Nona is one that I will most definitely use year after year during this specified read-aloud time.