Eventually, freed of other obligations, he plunged full time into both writing and illustrating children's books. It drove him through the years of teaching, designing greeting cards and stage sets, and painting church murals until 1965, when he illustrated his first children's book, Sound, by Lisa Miller for Coward-McCann.
His determination to create books for children led to a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and an MFA from the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland, California. By the time he could hold a pencil, he knew what his life's work would be.
Tremendous.Tomie dePaola was born in Meriden, Connecticut, in 1934 to a family of Irish and Italian background. It is a marvelous example of the height to which such a simple story can soar, and how an author's honest emotion can fill our hearts and minds even when few words are used. Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs belongs in rarified air, among the best picture books that I have ever read. No one who reads this book will ever forget the older Tommy looking out the window and seeing the shooting star, and the last thought that crosses his mind as the book draws to its close. The whole experience of knowing Nana Upstairs is made a blessing to us just as it was for young Tomie, and I am amazed by how perfectly he is able to make it all come so vividly alive.Īs the hands of time erode the older hierarchy of Tommy's family-including his two Nanas-the story becomes very poignantly emotional, defying the spare number of words to gracefully weave itself around the reader's heart. The anecdote about Nana Upstairs having to be tied to a chair to keep from falling out and Tommy asking Nana Downstairs to tie him in a chair, too, is one of the best things that I have ever read.
This book steps so delicately upon the walkway of Tomie's youth that its construction is equal to that of the magnificent spiderweb spun by nature's surest architect. I feel as if I know Tom, and Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs, and all the rest of Tomie's wonderful family as well as if they were my kin, too, and that is truly a special feeling that is hard to fully put into words. Speaking for myself in all sincerity, his picture-book family histories have welcomed me into the life he has led as warmly as if I were a part of the family. There is nothing in literature like the books that Tomie dePaola has written about his family when he was growing up.
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