And if you look closely at his books, you'll see white doves scattered across many of his pages. But his work did sometimes have spiritual overtones. MAYER: DePaola preferred stories with their feet on the ground. And I loved the legends of, like, how things came to be. I much preferred folk tales, which, you know, are more of the folk, more earthy. I didn't like fairy tales that much, like "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty." Those were OK. TOMIE DEPAOLA: I loved the Greek myths and legends. Here he is talking to NPR's Linda Wertheimer in 1998 about what he liked to read as a kid. He won a Newbery Honor in 2000 for "26 Fairmount Avenue," the first in a series of autobiographical books about his own childhood home in Connecticut. By his own count, he wrote or illustrated or both more than 270 books, several of which starred Strega Nona. MAYER: Tomie DePaola was almost as productive as that magic pot. Out of the windows and through the doors came the pasta. MARY STEENBURGEN: (Reading) The pasta had all but filled little house. Here's the actress Mary Steenburgen reading from the book for Storyline Online. Instead, he ended up nearly burying the town in wiggly, squiggly threads of pasta. PETRA MAYER, BYLINE: If you were a little kid in the 1980s, you knew Strega Nona, the crafty Italian grandmother who could cure warts and brew love potions and had a pot that cooked up endless dinner and endless problems for dopey Big Anthony, who didn't realize you had to stop the pot by blowing it kisses. NPR Books editor Petra Mayer has this appreciation. His bubbly, gentle illustrations charmed generations of children and were truly a reflection of the man himself. DePaola won the Caldecott Honor Award in 1976 for the book "Strega Nona," which was a tale of a witch, her assistant and a magic pot. We got sad news yesterday that children's author Tomie DePaola had died.
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