Donna Jo Napoli (born February 28, 1948) is an author of children's and young adult books, as well as a prominent linguist who has worked in syntax, phonetics, phonology, morphology, historical and comparative linguistics, Romance studies, structure of Japanese, structure of American Sign Language, poetics, writing for ESL students, and mathematical and linguistic analysis of folk dance.
She has taught linguistics at Smith College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and is currently a professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.
Born the youngest of four children in Miami, February 28, 1948, Napoli received both her B.A. (mathematics, 1970) and Ph.D. (Romance Languages -- the Linguistics Plan A, 1973) from Harvard, before a postdoctoral fellowship in linguistics at M.I.T. Napoli has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Italy.
Her children's books, listed below, have been translated into Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Persian, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and will be in Greek, Thai, and Polish. Many of her children's books are re-tellings of fairy tales, including The Magic Circle, Crazy Jack, Spinners, Zel, Bound, and Beast. Other children's stories are historical fiction based in Italy, including Daughter of Venice and For the Love of Venice.
Her publications in linguistics include Syntactic argumentation (with Emily Rando). (Washington, DC: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1979), Syntax: Theory and Problems (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), and Linguistics: Theory and Problems (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), with dozens of articles in the scholarly journals. She is a former member of the editorial board of the premiere journal Language. Napoli has won numerous awards for her work, including the Golden Kite Award given by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (for Stones in Water), the Sydney Taylor Award given by the Association of Jewish Libraries (for Stones in Water, and, honor book, The King of Mulberry Street and the Parents' Choice Silver Honor Award (for North and The King of Mulberry Street).
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Bibliography
Young Adult Novels
- The Magic Circle, published 1993
- Zel, published 1996
- Song of the Magdalene, published 1996
- Stones in Water, published 1997
- For the Love of Venice, published 1998
- Sirena, published 1998
- Spinners, published 1999
- Crazy Jack, published 1999
- Beast, published 2000
- Daughter of Venice, published 2002
- The Great God Pan, published 2003
- Breath, published 2003
- North, published 2004
- Fire in the Hills, published 2006
- Bound, published 2004
- The King of Mulberry Street, published 2005
- Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale, published 2007
- The Smile, published 2008
- Alligator Bayou, published 2009
Elementary and Middle School Novels
- Soccer Shock, published 1991
- The Prince of the Pond, published 1992
- When the Water Closes over my Head, published 1994
- Shark Shock, published 1994
- The Bravest Thing, published 1995
- Jimmy, the Pickpocket of the Palace, published 1995
- On Guard, published 1997
- Trouble on the Tracks, published 1998
- Changing Tunes, published 1998
- Shelley Shock, published 2000
- Three Days, published 2001
- Gracie, the Pixie of the Puddle, published 2004
- Sly the Sleuth and the Pet Mysteries, published 2005
- Ugly, published 2006
- Sly the Sleuth and the Sports Mysteries, published 2006
- Sly the Sleuth and the Food Mysteries, published 2007
- Mogo, the Third Warthog, published 2008
and The Angelwings Series (16 books)
Picture Books and Early Readers
- The Hero of Barletta, published 1988
- Albert, published 2001
- How Hungry are You?, published 2001
- Rocky, the Cat who Barks, published 2002
- Flamingo Dream, published 2002
- Hotel Jungle, published 2004
- Pink Magic, published 2005
- Bobby the Bold, published 2006
- The Wishing Club, published 2007
- Corkscrew Counts, published 2008
- Ready to Dream, published 2009
- The Earth Shook, published 2009
External links
- Donna Jo Napoli's Curriculum vitae
- Official website
- Author Profile and Interview, 2000.
- Phillips, Scott. Donna Jo Napoli: A Hunger for Words, Sept. 19, 2006.
- Cover art and reviews at FantasyLiterature.net
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