Dear readers, Time to shave the Parmesan and sauce the linguine: “Strega Nona,” Tomie DePaola’s charming and glutenous story about a magical, pasta-generating grandma, is barreling toward its 50th anniversary. You’d be forgiven for losing track of how long Strega Nona has been part of our consciousness, and not just because every other member of the Park Slope Food Coop dresses as if they’ve ransacked her closet. She and her cauldron brimming with noodles have felt like classics for so long that they seem to exist outside time itself. With this milestone in mind, my colleague Elisabeth Egan revisited Strega Nona’s world and zeroed in on her hapless employee, Big Anthony, and reports that he’s overdue for some justice: In the book, he’s the one who caused the pasta pot to flood the town. It seems, based on other books that dePaola wrote, that Anthony was stuck in a pattern of being scapegoated long before he crossed into Strega Nona’s home. There are some subtle lessons to be found. Anthony confesses that “everything in my head is fuzzy” when criticized for his tendency to daydream. And he has a history of learning things the hard way. (See the horde of women driven mad by his tarantella-dancing skills in “Big Anthony and the Magic Ring.”) I wish I could pinpoint my feelings about Anthony when I first read about his plight years ago. I’d like to think I felt compassion for him, and wasn’t on the side of the villagers calling for him to be strung up for his “crime.” Sometimes it takes a kid’s point of view to remember who we really should be rooting for. Not all heroes carry wooden spoons. Realistically, I was probably more focused on which of my grandmothers could provide me with rivers of spaghetti on demand. Before I go: Next week, to close out National Poetry Month, the Book Review is unrolling its first-ever challenge. Since you already receive this newsletter, you’ll be among the first to find out about it on Monday. We hope you follow along! See you then. Like this email?
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