June’s featured author
This month’s author is Donna Jo Napoli because I dearly love her inspired retelling of fairy tales. She’s an interesting woman, too. When I was looking for pictures of her (I end up not featuring a lot of author’s whose pictures are unavailable or unusable), I read some interviews and found out that she’s pretty fascinating.
I recently read her book Breath, which tells the Pied Piper story and explains the events by poisoning Hamelin with ergot. It’s a horrific read, to tell you the truth and I’d be surprised to hear that they’re teaching it in any middle schools. That’s why I chose the quote for her that I did. I liked it, in any case, although it was really disturbing.
Donna Jo was my professor in college! I took both a linguistics and a writing class from her. She was hands down the most adorable prof I ever had, not to mention a great teacher. Plus she would do things like bring meatballs to class and give us all one on a toothpick. I have to admit I’ve never read her fiction, though– now I’ll have to track down Breath.
Sounds like she speaks to what I think..along the lines befalling the character of Harry Potter - though I think some will be angry if/when something does happen to him. I agree with her…
She sounds fascinating, and today is library day -I’ll look for her, as sadly I don’t think I have read any of her writing(s).
Donna Jo was my advisor in college, and is a fabulous person. That photo expresses her personality perfectly.
I don’t know how she writes so much, teaches classes, heads her department, writes syntax textbooks, raised five kids, cooks fabulously, has a huge garden, and mothers her students. But she’s amazingly energetic, so that probably explains it.
(Haven’t commented here before, but I really enjoy reading your blog.)