Unknown to us at the time, as Tomie dePaola passed away on the 30th of March 2020, amongst the Bookworm team, we were all reading and preparing for a book discussion on The Clown of God, one of our more charged and purposeful discussions of 2020. We read Nana Upstairs Nana Downstairs to hundreds of school children every year allowing the possibility of death and the infinite love we can hold come together in one read aloud. We have discussed Oliver Button is a Sissy in so many of our ‘gender- sexuality’ thematic sessions for Professional Development marvelling at how colour, theme, identity and possibility could come together so beautifully. I have used The Legend of the Indian Paint Brush and The Art Lesson in my ‘ About Art and Stories’ unit in the past exploring how our meaning -making selves need reason to make sense of the world and how richly dePaola does this. In every session across children and adults The Knight and the Dragon is picked up for amazing performative moments, reflection, laughter and bittersweet memories thereafter. In our home under the tree when the children picked stories to read at Christmas, Merry Christmas Strega Nona, Friendly Beasts, Christmas Remembered, Country Angel Christmas and The Legend of the Poinsettia twinkled. They are all at Bookworm now in a box hopefully marked ‘ Christmas Books’ but are much more than that for me. Pancakes for Breakfast and The Hunter and the Animals are two wordless books I hope you have encountered upon the Bookworm shelf. Jane introduced us to Tattie’s River Journey in a session on word and image and only dePaola could have made a flood such an endearing journey with the ducks always in a row. His gentle humour and power of observation of the fine line between good and bad shone in all his Strega Nona books. But it was the character of Big Anthony whom I always felt drawn to, the one who was described as “Big Anthony, who didn’t pay attention” who could not help himself as his mind wandered.
There are so many Tomie dePaola books in my head and heart. I understand in his career he made 260 books. But I think he made billion more memories and opens out trillion more possibilities for those of us who read and have access. Bookworm has a generous number of Tomie dePaola books and we urge you to consider borrowing when you can. He is a treasure, no longer in this world but very much present.
