7 Fascinating Insights About 'Strega Nona'

Since its release in 1975, Tomie dePaola's enchanting story about a kind-hearted witch and her magical pasta pot has captivated readers of all ages. From its origins to an unexpected connection to the satanic panic, here are seven intriguing facts about Strega Nona.

Strega Nona draws inspiration from a traditional folktale.

In the early 1970s, Tomie dePaola’s editor, Ellen Roberts, encouraged him to create his own version of a favorite childhood folktale. DePaola immediately thought of the story about a magical porridge pot, which the Grimm brothers had published as Sweet Porridge, also known as The Magic Porridge Pot. In the story, an elderly woman gives a poor girl a magic pot that produces endless porridge when a specific phrase is said and stops when another phrase is spoken. However, the girl’s mother doesn't know the second phrase, causing the entire town to be flooded with porridge—forcing everyone to eat their way out. Knowing that children in the '70s might not be familiar with porridge, dePaola decided to change the pot’s output to pasta.

Strega Nona’s design was inspired by a commedia dell’arte character.

Strega Nona came to life during a faculty meeting at Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire, where dePaola was teaching at the time. 'I always sat in the back row with a legal pad and doodled. The administration thought I was taking notes,' he wrote on his website. One of his frequent sketches was Punchinello, a well-known clownish figure from the Italian commedia dell’arte. (Punchinello, or Pulcinella in Italian, was also the inspiration for the puppet Punch in 'Punch and Judy.') After whimsically adding a headscarf, apron, and skirt to his Punchinello drawing, dePaola realized he had created a delightful new character. Though he didn’t use her immediately, she later turned out to be the perfect fit for the role of the old woman when he decided to adapt the porridge pot tale.

Big Anthony was originally conceived as a girl.

In dePaola’s initial draft of Strega Nona, which is now housed in the Kerlan Children’s Literature Research Collection at the University of Minnesota, Big Anthony was not yet a character. Instead, the one who misuses the pasta pot was a female servant named Concetta. 'I felt that the world didn’t need one more not-so-bright servant girl in folklore,' dePaola explained, 'so I crossed out ‘Concetta’ and wrote instead ‘Big Anthony, who did not pay attention.’'

Strega Nona’s actual name is Nona.

Since strega means witch in Italian and nonna means grandmother, many assume that Strega Nona is merely a nickname. As for the single n in Nona, dePaola’s family hails from Calabria, Italy—where the books are set—and his relatives shared that Nona is a more informal term, similar to calling someone ‘Granny.’

However, in Strega Nona: Her Story, a prequel that delves into Strega Nona’s childhood, we discover that Nona was actually her given name. She was born on a stormy night, aided by a beloved witch named Grandma Concetta. 'She shall be called Nona,' Grandma Concetta declares. 'And she will become a strega.'

Strega Nona is a perfect example of poetic justice.

The villagers turn against Big Anthony after he nearly ruins their village with an avalanche of pasta, but Strega Nona quiets their cries of 'String him up!' by handing him a fork and instructing him to eat the pasta. 'The punishment must fit the crime,' she calmly explains. What young readers might not realize is that they’ve just witnessed a classic example of poetic justice—the idea that the consequences for bad behavior (or the rewards for good actions) should logically match the behavior itself. (Though, being hung in the town square with spaghetti—something one irate villager seems to be threatening—could also be seen as poetic justice.)

Strega Nona wasn’t entirely free from controversy.

Given that Strega Nona won the Caldecott Medal in 1976 and inspired a successful series of follow-up books, it’s clear the book was a hit. However, some critics took issue with its positive portrayal of magic and witchcraft—a particularly sensitive topic as the satanic panic gripped the late 1980s.

'It is teaching the occult to our children in a way that they think is harmless and fun, when in fact many children are going missing every year because they are stolen for use in satanic rituals performed... by various groups of witches,' one parent claimed in a 1990 editorial for The Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs, California.

A few days later, The Desert Sun published a rebuttal from Dennis W. Doty. He reminded readers that Strega Nona was rooted in a traditional folktale, much like Cinderella and Snow White, and that witchcraft and satanism were not the same thing. 'In the future, let’s try to move away from the ‘Ugly American’ mindset of assuming that if something is foreign or unfamiliar, it must be inferior,' Doty wrote. 'Our children have much to gain from learning about the folklore of cultures beyond our own. Let’s give them that chance.'

There’s a musical adaptation of Strega Nona.

The stage musical of Strega Nona weaves together plots from three books in the series: Strega Nona, Strega Nona’s Magic Lessons, and Big Anthony and the Magic Ring. Created by Thomas Olson and Roberta Carlson for the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis in the mid-1980s, it was later expanded by Aron Accurso for a 2006 production. 'For children too young for the darker themes in the Harry Potter books, this lighthearted witch’s brew casts just the right spell,' The New York Times wrote. A movie adaptation is also reportedly in the works: in December 2019, Deadline revealed that Lionsgate had acquired a pitch from the creators of the 2005 film Hoodwinked!.