Meriden Library Renames Children's Wing After Tomie DePaola

Whether they were watching him tap dance on city stages, choreograph the high school variety show or draw pilgrims in grade school art class, folks in Meriden seemed always to know that Tomie DePaola was bound for fame.

"I knew he was going to be something," said Leah Grossman Caplan, DePaola's first dance teacher, at a cocktail reception for the Caldecott and Newberry award-winning children's book author and illustrator Saturday night at the Meriden Public Library. "He became my star right from the beginning."

But despite the 76-year-old's far-reaching success, DePaola has never forgotten his hometown – immortalizing Meriden in a number of books, returning to the library from his current home in New London, NH, for events, and sponsoring a college art scholarship for local students.

On Saturday night, the Meriden Public Library thanked the native son with a cocktail party and a surprise – naming the children's wing after him.

"It is important to all of us that you know that we are aware of your generosity and that we care about you and the incredible impact you have made on children's literature," said Library Board President Joan Edgerly.

Surrounded by about 120 of his friends, family and local fans who were nearly all packed into the hallway in front of the expansive children's center, DePaola stood watching as staff pulled a curtain from above the door to reveal stenciled white letters on a glass pane reading: "Tomie DePaola Children's Library."

"I don't take this lightly..." said DePaola, looking up at the glass, "I think this is incredible."

The naming follows DePaola's receipt of the 2011 Wilder Medal by the American Library Association, a lifetime achievement award started in 1954, which honors an author who has made "over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children. Winning the medal puts DePaola in an elite group of 18 along with Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Maurice Sendak and the award's namesake Laura Ingalls Wilder. DePaola has written or illustrated more than 200 books, including the well-known Strega Nona.

DePaola read some of his Wilder Medal acceptance speech at Saturday's event.

He discussed his path, from growing up with Italian and Irish parents Joe and Flossie DePaola, brother Joseph and sisters Maureen and Judie in their home at 26 Fairmount Ave. in Meriden – the address is also the title of a series of books Tomie DePaola pens about being a child in the 1930s and 1940s – through his first big publishing break, illustrating a science book called "Sound" in the mid-1960s.

"This whole thing started when I was only 4 years old..." DePaola said. "I announced, when I grow up, I'm gonna be an artist, I'm gonna write stories and draw pictures for books, and I'm gonna sing and tap dance on the stage." 

He reminisced about his art teacher, Beulah Bowers, who gave him some lattitude in class – making sure he got extra pieces of paper and could use his own crayons – his dance teacher, Caplan, who started giving him lessons at 5 years old. She paired him up with Carol Morrissey, who was also in the audience, as a dance partner, and the two performed throughout the city together. "We were Meriden's answer to Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland," DePaola said. (A photo of the two is on DePaola's website here.)

In 1952, DePaola earned the Francis T. Maloney scholarship at Meriden High School that allowed him, the son of "a barber and liquor salesman who made $5,000 a year," to attend the Pratt Institute in New York. 

"It truly changed my life," DePaola told Schools Superintendent Mark Benigni, after Benigni mentioned the award in an introduction.

From the Institute, he spent a brief stint as a Benedictine monk in Vermont. "Needless to say, I didn't stay...the silence got to me," he said, to audience laughter. He moved to a small town and began creating paintings, making greeting cards and designing sets. He eventually moved to New York and found work as an illustrator. 

Guests at the event closed around the gregarious DePaola all night.

"I'm a little star struck," said Devon Carathurs, a first grade teacher from Westport who edged in for a photo with the author.

Stacy Folcik, a sixth grade teacher at Washington Middle School in Meriden told the author that she used his books in class, and did when teaching first and fourth grade at Israel Putnam Elementary School.

Her sixth graders enjoy Oliver Button is a Sissy, about a boy who is bullied for taking dance lessons. "The kids just pour out their own personal issues," when Folcik reads the book, she told Meriden Patch, "some of them."

Georgia Gast and her husband Arthur Gast drove in from Plymouth, Mass. to see their fellow class of 1952 alum, DePaola. They were two of several classmates who made it to the event. She said they used to put on variety shows and DePaola was always the choreographer.

"We were lucky," Georgia Gast said, "Meriden was a wonderful place to grow up."

It's this shared Meriden childhood that DePaola depicts that in many of his books.

"You can take Tomie out of Meriden," Library Director Karen Roesler said, "but you can't take Meriden out of Tomie."

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