Donna Jo Napoli

BIO

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INTERVIEW

December 6, 2000

Donna Jo Napoli has been penning her own versions of fairy tales for years, her most recent addition is BEAST,a retelling of Beauty's classic story, but this time from the Beast's point of view. Teenreads.com Writer Tammy Currier read several of Napoli's engaging stories and asked her questions about her most recent work. Find out why Napoli decided to set her new story in Persia, what sparked her fascination with lions, why she loves to research, and how fairy tales became such a significant part of her and her family's life. Even if you haven't delved into Napoli's magical world before,you'll want to dip your toes in this.

TRC: The fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast," has been retold many times. What made you decide to retell it from the Beast's point of view?

DJN: I've wanted to do this story for years. But then the Disney movie came out and the editor I approached wasn't thrilled at the timing. But in the summer of 1998, when Brenda Bowen became Vice President at Simon and Schuster, we were talking about what I might write next, and she actually asked me if I'd like to do the beast story. It was like being asked if I'd like to breathe or eat or sleep.

TRC: What made you decide to use Persia, modern day Iran, as the backdrop for your retelling?

DJN: I read many versions of the story, and none of them gave any hint of who the lion really was, other than saying he was an enchanted man, with one exception: In Charles Lamb's story the lion, now turned man at the end, announces that he is Prince Orasmyn of Persia and that a wicked fairy turned him into a lion. That sent me running to the older Persian stories, where I learned that roses and lions are important figures in Persian culture for as far back as I could find out. I suspect that Charles Lamb was right and that this story is originally of Persian origin.

TRC: Your portrayal of Prince Orasmyn as lion, or beast, was very convincing. How did you put yourself into the "paws" of a lion, so to speak?

DJN: In the summer of 1995 I was lucky enough to go to South Africa, where I gave a series of lectures in linguistics and a series of talks on children's writing at universities in Johannesburg and in Cape Town. As part of that trip, my family went to a reserve park, and the lions fascinated me. We came across a pride close by the side of the road; we went on a night scouting and drove right up to females hunting (in an open-sided jeep, mind you --- our guide may very well have been insane); we even watched a female hunt wildebeests (though she failed to bring any down). My oldest daughter, Elena, took zillions of photos of them, which I surrounded myself with as I worked on BEAST. I read dozens of books about lions. I also visited the Philadelphia Zoo and the National Zoo in Washington DC, sitting for hours in front of the lion enclosures. And I watched videos of lions in the wild.

Lions have expressive faces. The photos that Elena took are marvelous. I can look into those faces and feel like I'm climbing inside the heads of the beasts. Lions also have a range of sounds they make. I even found spectrographs of different lion calls --- roars, growls, rolling grrrs, all sorts of things --- and I studied them, imagining how it would feel to make those noises, to hear them and respond to them.

TRC: In fact everything about the book rings with authenticity. Each of your settings, from Persia to India to France, rings true, as does your handling of language and custom, setting and geography, religion and animal behavior, and literature and gardening. How much research was involved?

DJN: You make me so happy. Thank you for saying that. I love writing. But maybe the best part for me is the research. I believe that we are the products of our worlds. That doesn't mean that all of us in one area at one time are the same --- but we sure do have a lot in common in terms of our shared experiences. So if I am going to write about some time or place or society that I am not part of, I have to do research. Lots of it. Until I'm totally seeped in it. And I get carried away. When I was writing BEAST I ate meat off the bone many times --- and this from someone who never cooks meat at home (we pretty much follow a vegetarian diet). I wrote love poetry, too. It's impossible not to read the Sufi love poems without being swirled away on their thick, glistening drops. In fact, my son, Michael, married Noëlle, on June 10, 2000, and at his wedding various members of both families read poems. By that point I had saturated my family in Persian poetry --- and three of the poems read at Michael and Noëlle's wedding were adaptations from Rumi or Saadi.

I also loved the research for BEAST, in particular, because it allowed me to explore Islam --- something I've wanted to do for personal reasons --- my maternal grandmother was born in Egypt. Her mother was a Catholic --- so there was no sense of Islam in my family growing up. Still, Islam was like a mystery waiting for me. It is still a mystery, of course. But one that I now have a deep appreciation of. The sensuality of a veil, the remarkable attraction of the unspoken promise, the absolute comfort of a belief system that is all-encompassing --- these are powerful lures. When the lion in my story chants, I feel dizzy; I feel like I'm moved outside myself, beyond, to where I don't even guess, I just accept.

And the France part felt natural to me because France is so close to us in terms of culture and history. I've traveled there often. Still, I read a lot about 1500 in France before I dared to pick up my pencil.

TRC: Actually, BEAST presents a cornucopia of topics worthy of further study. Was that intentional?

DJN: Nope. All I wanted to do was tell the story.

TRC: Verse plays a very important part in Prince Orasmyn's life. In the end, it is his verse (and his religion) that keeps him from losing himself completely to the behaviors of lion. In your opinion, what does verse do for the human soul? Do you read much verse?

DJN: Poetry served Orasmyn, but painting or dancing or singing or playing the accordion might serve someone else. Art matters. Certainly it is one of the things that matters most to our spirits. With art we can be intimate without having to be naked or bald. We can explore parts of our feelings and hopes and dreams that we don't allow for in our daily work and responsibilities to others. We can be better --- and what a joy that is. Yes, I read poetry a lot. I also write it, and have for as long as I can remember being able to write, but I write it mostly in moments of despair
--- not nearly enough in moments of happiness. This is one of my stupidities.

TRC: What do you hope readers will take away from this retelling?

DJN: I hope they'll have entered Orasmyn --- lived what he lived, learned what he learned. Sometimes we have trouble being compassionate to the beasts inside us. Maybe this story will help some readers to be humane and compassionate not just toward others, but toward themselves. But those are lofty hopes --- and I make myself sort of sick when I express them. My job as a writer is to tell a story, not to lecture or preach or teach or seduce. Just tell the best story I can.

TRC: Since THE HERO OF BARLETTA, your first published book, you have written a mix of realistic and historical fiction, as well as many fairy tale retellings. What prompted you to write THE MAGIC CIRCLE, your first fairy tale retold? After writing it, did you have any idea that you would continue in that vein?

DJN: My daughter Eva, when she was ten years old, asked me, "How come there are so many wicked witches and evil stepmothers in fairy tales and no wicked warlocks and evil stepfathers?" My little feminist heart started beating fast. I decided to take the worst female character of fairy tales that I could find --- and the witch of Hansel and Gretel was it, for what could be worse than eating human babies? --- and try to understand her.

But THE MAGIC CIRCLE wasn't, in fact, my first fairy tale novel. THE PRINCE OF THE POND came out the year before (in 1992) --- it's the frog prince story told from the point of view of the woman frog without which he would have been snake meat fast. And while that was my first published fairy tale, it wasn't the first one I told. My children and husband and I had been telling fairy tales from many points of view for years. We always read together, then the children climbed in bed (all five of them in one room --- we had two bunks and a junior mattress on the floor), and we turned out the lights, and my husband and I sat in the center of the room on the rug and we all told stories in the dark until someone fell asleep. It was a magic time. And I learned a lot about the richness of fairy tales from those years.

TRC: Though many of the tales you have retold show up in some form or another in other cultures, you've pretty much stayed with the fairy tales of the European (or Western) tradition. Do you think you might try your hand at retelling a Guatemalan tale, for example? How do you decide which fairy tales to retell?

DJN: Ah, you've caught me. I taught in China in the summer of 1997, and ever since, I've wanted to tell a Chinese tale. But I have to find the time to do the research.

And there's an African tale I need to tell.

And a Buddhist one (though I don't even know the setting of it at this point).

There are so many stories to tell. And there isn't enough time.

What attracts me to a story is some behavior I cannot understand --- something that seems vile or bizarre. Like locking your daughter in a tower for years. Or bragging that your daughter can spin straw into gold and thus threatening her life. I've always been more interested in why people do things than in what they do. So if I don't understand the why of a story, I'm hooked.

TRC: Were you interested in fairy tales as a child? If not, what did you like to read?

DJN: I loved fairy tales. I also loved everything Walter Farley ever wrote. I loved reading biographies. I loved books about nature. I was an avid reader. By reading I could go anywhere and be anyone. I loved that freedom.

TRC: Retelling fairy tales has become very popular in the last decade or so. In addition to your own retellings, do you have any favorites from the recent crop?

DJN: I don't read other people's fairy tales. I'm very impressionable, and I'm afraid that if I read someone's story, I'd think, "Ah, so that's the truth," and then I wouldn't be able to tell my own story. I'm sorry to disappoint you. I do read lots of children's fiction and adult fiction. Just not fairy tales.

TRC: Though much of your work is written for the teen reader, it is sophisticated and captivating enough to entertain adults. What made you decide to write for young adults? Do you have any favorite YA authors?

DJN: I didn't decide to write for the teen reader. The publishers who publish me are children's publishers --- so my work gets labeled YA. I write for all ages. I have four unpublished novels for adults (and they can't be YA, because the main characters are adults and their concerns are all adult), but I haven't found an adult publisher. It takes a lot of time to find a publisher when you don't have an agent --- and right now I have a few children's publishing houses I work well with, so that's where I'm putting my time. But I'm still writing adult stuff for my own pleasure.

Yes, there are many YA authors whose work I adore. Suzanne Fisher Staples, Patrice Kindl, Robert Cormier, Kathryn Patterson, Paul Zindel, Scott O'Dell, Karen Hesse, Betsy Byars, oh, so many --- and I'm in my office, not at home where my library is, so I feel bad that I'm not naming others --- and I have some favorites who might be considered more middle novel than YA novel, like Lloyd Alexander and Elvira Woodruff and Beverly Cleary and, oh my, there are so many great books out there.

TRC: And finally, each of your retellings has been very successful. Will we see any others? If not, do you have something else in the works?

DJN: In 2001 two or maybe three picture books of mine will come out --- my very first ones. One of them is based on a St. Kevin story (I love religious stories as much as I love fairy tales and myths and folktales). One of them is a very personal story about the death of a father. One of them is co-authored with Richard Tchen (who co-authored SPINNERS with me) and it's a math story. I also have a contemporary novel for upper elementary coming out --- called THREE DAYS. It's disturbing.

In 2002 I have a YA historical fiction set in Venice in the very late 1500's (around 1590), and another picture book that I co-authored with my sister, Marie Kane, who died in 1996. In the works is another myth for YA (my only other one is SIRENA, which I loved working on), and a contemporary adventure story for middle grades, and more picture books. And in my head are the germs of the stories I mentioned above, set in China and Africa and somewhere in the traditionally Buddhist world.

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