Strega Nona in Mineola Library's 2012 FALL Reading Challenge

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Dec 27, 2010 Suzanne Moore rated it it was amazing

Shelves: winter-challenge-picks, childrens-1001-5-plus

Strega Nona is the town “witch” but not in a bad way. She can cure headaches, mix love potions, and remove warts. She stays so busy helping the townspeople that she decides to hire an extra hand. Big Anthony takes the job doing chores for her, and she warns him not to touch her cooking pot. When Anthony sees her chanting over the pot, and then sees the pot fill with pasta, he realizes it must be magic. He notices that she has to tell the pot to stop cooking but doesn’t see her blow the pot three Strega Nona is the town “witch” but not in a bad way. She can cure headaches, mix love potions, and remove warts. She stays so busy helping the townspeople that she decides to hire an extra hand. Big Anthony takes the job doing chores for her, and she warns him not to touch her cooking pot. When Anthony sees her chanting over the pot, and then sees the pot fill with pasta, he realizes it must be magic. He notices that she has to tell the pot to stop cooking but doesn’t see her blow the pot three kisses. One day when Strega Nona leaves to visit a friend, Anthony disobeys her and decides to try out the pot. Once the pot starts to work, Anthony invites the town over for a free pasta dinner. After everyone has their fill of pasta, Anthony asks the pot to stop, but doesn’t know he needs to blow three kisses to make it stop. Unable to stop the pasta, the whole town is about to be consumed, when just in time, Strega returns to stop the pot.
The media used for this story’s art could be watercolor, maybe colored pencil that was dampened as it was applied. The result is a rich, dark color value. The images are distinctly outlined with dark brown, but when shadows are placed around the characters and scenery, the effect is three-dimensional, bringing the story to life. The overall shades used are warm hues. But once night falls a few outlined stars and a crescent moon appear surrounded by bluish halos, showing the progression of time.
Each scene is illustrated in its own frame; boxed in with straight lines. The characters in the story gesture and point to objects discussed, unifying the pictures with the text. The story can almost tell itself by the pictures alone, so that pre-readers can follow the plot by looking closely at each framed scene. Throughout the story the vertical lines show the well-built buildings of the town, the arched windows, and doors to give the time period a Renaissance feel. The overlapping clay-colored roof tiles reminded me of Spain.
The pasta of course is made of curvy lines that intermingle, crossing each other in all directions. As the pasta cooks you notice faint wavy lines above the pot that represent steam rising. When the pasta starts to overflow the pot, more and more noodles appear. They seem to be sliding off of each other as they carry Big Anthony away on a wave of spaghetti flowing down the street. To clean up the pasta that covered the town, Big Anthony is given a fork and told to start eating. In the last few frames as the pasta diminishes the shape of Anthony’s stomach grows rounder and rounder.
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Jan 10, 2013 Lynn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kids

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Mar 10, 2013 Kendra rated it really liked it

Shelves: picture-books

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From the Bookshelf of Mineola Library's 2012 FALL Reading Challenge…

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Mineola Library's 2012 FALL Reading Challenge