In her office overlooking the Mississippi River, Lisa Von Drasek pulls one watercolor painting after another out of a big flat box. The pastel scenes feature blue pumpkins and blue rolling hills, a plump rabbit, lots of spaghetti and a roly-poly grandmother figure with her signature headscarf, apron and cauldron.
It’s Strega Nona, a beloved witch from children’s literature. “This is pen and ink and watercolor and a little pencil crayon. You see? Look at her dancing,” says Von Drasek, the curator of the Kerlan Collection of Children’s Literature at the University of Minnesota.
