Tomie dePaola: Hi. My name is Tomie dePaola. Now, both names are kind of funny to spell because Tomie is T-O-M-I-E, which was the spelling I got as a child from my mother. But it's pronounced "Tommy," like T-O-M-M-Y. My last name is "De-Powl-a", not "de-pay-o-la," even though there's an A before the O. It's an Italian name and Paola is a town in Calabria that my grandfather came from, and if you think of Paola as being P-O-W-L-A, that's how you pronounce the Paola part, and the D, E means from the family of Paola, or of the nobility of Paola.