Part of my family has strong Italian heritage and I’m always happy to find ways to connect the kids back to that part of my ancestry. While we are not Catholic, this was a sweet book about an orphan in Italy, gifted a skill with the question of will he remember the one who gifted that skill to him or spend it all for his own glory?
Tomie is a favorite storyteller and illustrator for us, especially his Italian-themed books like Strega Nona. We have read several of his other books too, depicting predominantly Catholic folk stories from other cultures – these we take with a grain of salt as he is stepping out of his cultural heritage to tell those stories. When that happens, I try my best to find another telling of the story by someone from that culture – it may sound daunting but there are so many children’s books these days with such a diversity of culture and writers!
Social Studies
These are all the books we used to address the variety of topics under the Social Studies category – language, geography, the Renaissance, orphans, and occupations. At this point, the kids want to be an electrician and a babysitter. The Renaissance and Meet Samantha were over my kids’ abilities, but they would be excellent reads for older kids.
Art
There is such artistry in designing and building bridges! This book was a good intro to bridge engineering and we even tried building our own with blocks and lincoln logs.
I also found a video on YouTube for kids to learn to juggle. We discovered that we are not coordinated enough (but maybe just at this time).
Science (Aging)
I will gladly create a list of picture books we’ve come across which deal with aging loved ones and grief. It is such a delicate subject for children and they can come up with some difficult questions. Tomie wrote this book based on his own grandmothers. We’ve even stumbled on books dealing with the death of a pet.
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Complete Booklist:
Find the full list on 
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- “The Clown of God” by Tomie DePaola
- “Italy” by Rebecca Sabelko
- “My First Book of Italian Words” by Katy Kudela
- “Meet Samantha” by Susan Adler
- “The ABCs of What I Can Be” by Caitlin McDonagh
- “Bridges” by Chris Bowman
- “Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs” by Tomie DePaola
Xapa to the World 
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