Napoli, Donna Jo, 1948-....

Donna Jo Napoli was born February 28, 1948 in Miami, Florida. She received her B.A. from Harvard in 1970, and her Ph.D from Harvard in 1973. She has worked as a lecturer in philosophy, linguistics, and mathematics throughout her career and is currently a professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

Her works employ both humor and skillful prose to craft stories of hope and inspiration. Noting that her books for young readers can be broadly divided into two types: contemporary realistic novels and fairy-tale retellings, an essayist in the St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers praised the author's strong points as her ability to create genuine, believable characters and equally believable plots.

Her first story, The Hero of Barletta, an adaptation of a traditional Italian folk tale, was published in 1988. Since then she has published a number of fairy tale retellings including Zel, a revisioning of Rapunzel, and Crazy Jack a somewhat darker version of Jack and the Beanstalk .

Biographical Source:

Somthing About the Author , vol. 137, pp. 154-160.

From the guide to the Donna Jo Napoli Papers, 1998-2010, (University of Minnesota Libraries Children's Literature Research Collections [clrc])