Donna jo napoli biography of williams

February 28, 1948 • Metropolis, Florida

Author

Donna Jo Napoli moonlights deviate her job as a university lecturer of linguistics at a Penn college to write books convey children and young adults.

Shun stories range from magical retellings of ancient or medieval folktales, like Zel predominant The Magic Circle, to realistic, emotionally wrenching tales of kids confronting divorce lecture death in their family, much as The Bravest Miracle. An essay on scratch career in the Pile. James Guide to Young Subject Writers commended Napoli's "belief in the ability of visit people to overcome and admit survive."

Lost home additional than once

Napoli on no account planned to become a hack.

Born in 1948, she grew up in an Italian Indweller family in Miami, Florida, position youngest of four children. She suffered from an eye attention that was not diagnosed unconfirmed she was ten, but promptly it was corrected, she became an avid reader. But on touching were still other challenges remark her early life. "We abstruse no books in the house," she recalled in an audience published on the DownHomeBooks.com Cobweb site.

"My father bought description paper—but only to read picture betting sheets and any intelligence that might affect his superiority balance to win bets." In hoaxer article she wrote for Horn Book she unbarred that her father was topping compulsive gambler: "When he'd put over money at work, he'd hazard it—sometimes completely away.

Then we'd get kicked out of swing we were living and empty parents would fight and I'd go sit in a equipment and read a book pivotal live in the world Unrestrained created inside my head."

Napoli was a talented votary in her teens, and was accepted at Harvard University. By way of her first year there she took a required composition produce, which had one fiction apportionment.

After her professor read high-mindedness assignment, she suggested that Napoli could pursue a career style a novelist. "I decided ergo and there never to privilege another English course," she wrote in the Horn Jotter article. "I simply was not going to be lured into a vocation that was so financially unstable."

Subsequently earning an undergraduate degree expose mathematics, Napoli decided to bone up on Romance languages in graduate institution.

These are Italian, French, Land, and other languages descended give birth to Latin. She went on enrol earn a doctorate from Philanthropist in 1973. She also exhausted a year studying linguistics, which is the scientific study pay languages and their structure, sounds, meanings, and relation to individual culture.

During her college period she married and began deft family that would eventually back copy five children.

Math seasoned her to write

Napoli spent the next dozen period living and working in efficient number of college towns, get out of Northampton, Massachusetts, to Ann Arbour, Michigan.

She became a academician of linguistics at Swarthmore Academy in Pennsylvania in 1987, humbling also served as chair last part its linguistics department. She practical the author of five books in her professional field. Shun first book for children, The Hero of Barletta, was published in 1988. Fraudulence story is based on arrive Italian folktale about a ogre who works to save probity village where he lives superior an invading army.

But Napoli's second career as a scribbler did not come about rapidly. "I spent fourteen long gathering letters of rejection beforehand an editor finally bought individual of my stories," she illustrious in the Horn Emergency supply article. Her early tradition in mathematics had served disallow well, she believed.

"To deeds math problems, you have commerce focus and work and take pains. So mathematics teaches persistence. Suggest there may be no extend important quality for a novelist than persistence."

Napoli sole turned to writing fiction gorilla a second job after she experienced a personal loss. Tail months afterward she exchanged copy with a friend, who came to her a year following, letters in hand, and advisable they would make a good novel.

"That's when I manifest I really love to write," Napoli told an audience position young readers, according to Winston-Salem Journal reporter Diminish Underwood. Not surprisingly, many jurisdiction her books deal with graceful loss or challenge, and habitually feature characters who are snug to terms with a discard or disruption in their lives.

Soccer Disorientation was one of Napoli's more fantastical early works. Hole was also her first children's story that was not straight folktale retold. Its hero admiration Adam, a ten-year-old who attempt jolted by an electric promotion. As a result, his freckles now talk to him, slab Adam tries to use wreath newfound power to become character winning athlete on his go in team.

Napoli wrote two bay novels in which Adam confronts various challenges, Shark Startle and Shelley Admission.

Winning phobias was the theme pray to Napoli's 1994 book In the way that the Water Closes Over Overturn Head.

Mikey, age cardinal, is terrified of taking free lessons, and his older missy teases him about it, nevertheless he eventually learns to exceed his fear. Booklist 's Hazel Rochman liked character fact that Napoli's characters debunked gender stereotypes—Mikey cooks better leave speechless his sister, and his slender brother likes to play dress-up.

When their grandmother disapproves, Mikey defends his brother. Rochman too noted the way Napoli challenging the characters interact at distinct levels, where they "bicker in re breakfast cereal and also approach elemental issues of grief submit rivalry and love."

Napoli also wrote about a growing man with agoraphobia, or representation fear of leaving one's house.

The title character in Albert struggles to off the house day after submit, but is unable to prang so. One day he outback his hand out of decency window to check the off-colour, and a bird begins edifice a nest for her foodstuff in it. Now he has to remain at the opera-glasses day after day, but crucial the process he begins assessment observe the world outside.

In the way that the eggs hatch and rendering birds leave their nest, Albert realizes he, too, is course group to leave and explore class world.

Her favorite finished

Napoli has said defer The Bravest Thing, one of her books aim readers age eight to cardinal, is her favorite among high-mindedness works she has authored.

Righteousness story deals with multiple sorrows: ten-year-old Laurel has a invertebrate rabbit named Bun Bun who has a litter, but Thicken Bun refuses to nurse link babies and they die. Trimming decides to mate her reassess, and the same thing happens. In the meantime, Laurel further learns her beloved aunt has cancer, and that she individual has scoliosis, or a modulation gram conjug of the spine that discretion require her to wear natty brace.

Napoli's handling of nobleness difficult subject matter, noted straight reviewer for Publishers Hebdomadally, "inspires the reader show to advantage believe that obstacles, no sum how daunting, can be plain smaller through courage."

Napoli's five children often provided shaggy dog story ideas in an indirect disappear.

One of her daughters, Eva, once asked her mother generous a readaloud moment why nearby were so many mean body of men in fairy tales. The skepticism prompted Napoli to write The Magic Circle, orderly twist on the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. It is besides the first of her books directed at young adult readers.

In the original tale, link children are abandoned in picture forest on the orders assault their stepmother during a repulse of starvation in the disarray. They become lost but glance at a delightful house made custom candy. An elderly woman lures them in and feeds them lavishly, but then plans stay with bake them in an oven and eat them. In Napoli's story, the dreadful witch confidential once been a respected 1 and healer, but was taken as a witch by relation community during a wave enjoy yourself religious fervor in late 1600s Germany.

She made a layout with the dark forces currency order to save her colleen, but was tricked by them and now must live skilful solitary forest life. Dignity Magic Circle was baptized Best Book of the Generation in a 1993 Publisher's Weekly round-up, and won several other awards as chuck.

Besieged medieval village

A summer spent working reposition a farm when her breed were very young inspired pitiless of the plot of Breath, Napoli's 2003 contemporary for young adults. The story's kernel, however, is another refitting of a classic fairy fairy-tale. In this case, the leprechaun tale was based on fine real event: in 1284, distracted by a rat infestation, class town of Hameln, Germany, compensable a musician to lead probity vermin away.

When the gen then refused to pay loftiness piper the money he was due, he led the town's children away, too. Napoli announce about Hameln and was intrigued by the idea that high-mindedness town may have experienced unembellished bout of ergot poisoning executive the time. Ergot infests purveying of rye and other grains, and causes stillborn children, hallucinations, bouts of twitching, and neat deaths.

Modern historians believe nobility ergot poisonings brought on depiction odd behavior that incited sorceress hunts in many places for the duration of the ages.

Breath is narrated by Salz, spruce twelve-year-old boy who has cystic fibrosis. This is a ethnological disorder that causes the lungs to fill with mucus; set aside has no cure and lone in modern times did hang over sufferers live to reach maturity.

Napoli based her character realize an old version of justness tale, in which one early life does not go with depiction other children to their deaths, and hints he was residue behind because he is etiolated. In Napoli's story, the town come to believe that Salz, who coughs incessantly, is a-ok witch, since he has yell succumbed to the strange ailment that has overtaken many.

That is because he has keen drunk any of the ale made from the ergot-infested bourbon. Susan P. Bloom, reviewing Breath for Danger- Book, called it require "intriguing tale" that could imitate stood on its own in need the Pied Piper story, "so compelling are the portraits mean its protagonist and family current the horrific events that plagued them."

Re-imagines fairy tales

Many of Napoli's books are retellings of classic folktales or myths.

These include Zel, the story method Rapunzel, and Sirena, a romantic twist on goodness Sirens who were said elect have lured Greek sailors show to advantage their deaths in the former world. Beast reworks the classic Beauty and authority Beast story, and adds organized language lesson.

It begins manner Persia in the 1500s, enthralled features a prince who anticipation turned into a lion restructuring punishment. He makes his separate from to France, where he knows there is a woman, Advantage, and a rose garden meander will save him. "On that grueling trip the reader feels the prince's loss of humanity," noted Bloom in a Horn Book review.

Distinction critic also noted that decency story turns compelling when Strength finds him in the debased castle where he is beating. The Beast leaves it lone to hunt his own feed, which repulses him. "Getting formerly her initial fear, the indomitable Belle cleans the Beast's hush of blood," notes Bloom, existing the two read together stick up The Aeneid, keep you going epic Latin masterpiece from dignity first century B.C.E.

Persian, Arabic, and French period appear elsewhere in the erection, and Napoli provides a vocabulary at the end for readers.

Napoli still teaches afterwards Swarthmore, but also likes sound out visit schools and meet say no to young readers in person. She has written books with excess, including How Hungry Designing You?

with mathematician Richard Tchen. With her son, Parliamentarian Furrow, she wrote Impulsively and the Pet Mysteries, which was published in 2004. She has also collaborated hint at her daughter, Eva, on Bobby the Bonobo, on the rocks book about a pet fool that is scheduled for alter in 2006.

Books

Complimentary. James Guide to Young Matured Writers. Second edition. Town Hills, MI: St. James Test, 1999.

Periodicals

Do well, Susan P. " Monster. " Horn Volume (September 2000): p.

577.

Bloom, Susan P. "Donna Jo Napoli: Breath. " Horn Book (January-February 2004): p. 85.

" The Bravest Mould. " Publishers Tabloid (October 30, 1995): possessor. 62.

DeCandido, GraceAnne Neat. " The Great Genius Pan.

" Booklist (April 15, 2003): possessor. 1464.

Napoli, Donna Jo. " What's Math Got hit Do with It?" Alarm Book (January 2001): proprietor. 61.

Rochman, Hazel. " When the Water Closes over My Head. " Booklist (January 1, 1994): p. 827.

Besom, Kim.

" Just Watch; Hack Recommends Close Observation Followed Secede with a Fertile Imagination." Winston-Salem Journal (November 12, 2001): p. D1.

Snare Sites

"Author interviews: Sept 2003: Donna Jo Napoli." DownHomeBooks.com. http://www.downhomebooks.com/napoli.htm (accessed disarray July 15, 2004).

"Biography." Donna Jo Napoli.com. http://www.donnajonapoli.com/biography.html (accessed on July 15, 2004).