Donna Jo Napoli is an author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 of children's and young adult books, as well as a prominent linguist who has worked in syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

, phonetics

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

, phonology

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

, morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

, historical and comparative linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, Romance studies

Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...

, structure of Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, structure of American Sign Language

American Sign Language

American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...

, poetics

Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...

, writing for ESL

ESL

ESL is a common abbreviation for English as a Second Language, see English language learning and teaching.ESL may also refer to:-Companies:...

 students, and mathematical and linguistic analysis of folk dance

Folk dance

The term folk dance describes dances that share some or all of the following attributes:*They are dances performed at social functions by people with little or no professional training, often to traditional music or music based on traditional music....

.

She has taught linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 at Smith College

Smith College

Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...

, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

, Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and is currently a professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 at Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....

.

Born the youngest of four children in Miami, February 28, 1948, Napoli received both her B.A. (mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, 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, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish, and will be in Thai and Polish. Many of her children's books are re-tellings of fairy tale

Fairy tale

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

s, including The Magic Circle, Crazy Jack, Spinners, Zel, Breath, Bound, Beast, and The Wager for older children, and The Prince of the Pond, Ugly, and Mogo the Third Warthog for younger children. Other children's stories are historical fiction based in Italy, including Daughter of Venice, For the Love of Venice, and The Smile.

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), Linguistics: Theory and Problems (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), Humour in sign languages: The linguistic underpinnings (with Rachel Sutton-Spence) (Dublin: Trinity Press, 2009), 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, and honor book Breath), 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 Gold Award (for Alligator Bayou and Silver awards for North and The King of Mulberry Street).

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
  Daughter of Venice
  Daughter of Venice is an historical fiction/young adult novel, published in 2002 by Random House Inc.-Plot summary:This story follows Donata, daughter of a wealthy noble in 1592....
  
  , published 2002
• The Great God Pan
  The Great God Pan
  "The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication in 1894...
  
  , published 2003
• Breath, published 2003
• North, published 2004
• Bound, published 2004
• The King of Mulberry Street, published 2005
• Fire in the Hills, published 2006
• Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale
  Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale
  Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale is a 2007 young adult novel written by Donna Jo Napoli. The young adult novel depicts the world of slave trade around the year 900 in Ireland....
  
  , published 2007
• The Smile, published 2008
• Alligator Bayou, published 2009
• The Wager published 2010

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
• Sly the Sleuth and the Code Mysteries, published 2009

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
• Handy Stories to Read and Sign, published 2009
• Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya, Illustrations by Kadir Nelson
  Kadir Nelson
  Kadir Nelson is an award-winning African American artist, illustrator and author. His work is focused on African American culture and history.-Early life:...
  
  , Simon & Schuster
  Simon & Schuster
  Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
  
  /Paula Wiseman Books, 2010