IN STREGA NONA, author and illustrator Tomie dePaola’s most widely known picture book, an Italian witch has a magic pot that produces pasta on command with a song. Strega Nona is a town healer, concocting love potions and curing warts and headaches. In her old age, she hires a man named Big Anthony to help keep her home and garden. She assigns him a list of chores and warns him to never touch the pasta pot.
When Strega Nona leaves for a trip, Big Anthony ignores her warning and tries the spell for himself, singing, “Bubble, bubble, pasta pot, / Boil me some pasta, nice and hot, / I’m hungry and it’s time to sup, / Boil enough pasta to fill me up.” Out comes the pasta! Big Anthony invites everyone to eat, but once the village has had their fill, a horrifying reality sets in: Big Anthony doesn’t know how to stop the pot, and pasta overtakes the village. Just as the townspeople are about to be buried in pasta, Strega Nona returns. She blows three kisses to the pot, stopping the pasta and saving the town. The charming book ends with an image of a very full Big Anthony after having eaten the mess he’s made.
You may be familiar with the tale of Strega Nona; it comes from a long history of folktales. In 19th century Germany, it was known as “Sweet Porridge” and recorded by the Brothers Grimm. The story goes that a poor, hungry girl receives a pot that makes endless porridge. When the girl is away, her mother tries to use the pot and porridge floods the town. Just as the final house is about to be overtaken, the girl returns to say the magic words. Anyone wishing to return to the town had to eat their way back. In the Chinese folktale “The Water Mother,” it wasn’t a pot, but a pail of water that overflowed and created a stream that drowned the pail’s owner. All these tales might call to mind “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” made famous for some in Disney’s Fantasia. In that folktale, an apprentice, tired of doing his mentor’s chores, enchants a broom to do the work for him. The situation quickly gets out of hand, and he is driven to chop up the broom with an axe, but each new splintering creates a new broom. This continues until the sorcerer intercedes, then lectures his apprentice that only a master should invoke a powerful spirit.
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