What We're Reading ~ Strega Nona's Harvest

We checked out Strega Nona's Harvest from the library! We already have a couple books by Tomie dePaola, and we love the illustrations and simple stories. Strega Nona is a classic, and this book in the series is not disappointing!

In Italian, Strega Nona roughly translates to Grandma Witch. Not the dark magic kind of witch, but more like an herbalist with home remedies. The book is laced with lots of Italian vocabulary, exposing littles to a new language.

Just a quick pronunciation guide for reading this book: Italian is similar to Spanish in that all vowels are uniform. A=ah, E=eh, I=ee, O=oh, U=oo, and none of them are ever silent. The only tricky consonant is C. The letter C followed by A O or U makes a K sound. Followed by I or E, it makes a CH sound. So, the word CARCIOFO (which means asparagus) is pronounced kar-chee-OH-foh. And if you see a CH in a word, it makes a hard K sound, like in zucchini (even if there's more than one C!).

This book even teaches just a little about horticulture and how to grow your own garden. This one will be useful for our littles as we'll be moving to a house that has a garden, and they'll be helping out!

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