Cipollino is young, brave, clever, and determined- exactly the kind of valiant hero that’s bound to triumph in fairy tales. Except, did we mention that he’s also a little onion? You read that right: In this fantastic book of high political drama – a classic of Italian children’s literature- all of the characters are fruits, vegetables, and animals. Cipollino sets out to free his wrongfully imprisoned father. In the process, he faces off against scoundrels of all kinds. What hangs in the balance is nothing more or less than the freedom of an entire kingdom from the senseless rules imposed by the tyrannical Prince Lemon, and the equal dignity of each blueberry, string bean, and spider. Written in the atmosphere of hope and enthusiasm of post–World War II Italy, Cipollino and his friends don’t rely on weapons and violence in their battle against injustice, but rather on jokes and tricks, ingenuity and courage, heart and solidarity. With much laughter, luck, and pluck, they band together to bring fun, respect, and decency back to the land.

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From the father of modern Italian children’s literature, a guide to fairy tales and their potential for teaching creative storytelling to children – with radiant illustrations from Matthew Forsythe and a refreshed translation from Jack Zipes. A groundbreaking pedagogical work that is also a handbook for writers of all ages and kinds, The Grammar of Fantasy offers a playful, practical path to finding your own voice through the power of storytelling. Full of ideas, glosses on fairy tales, stories, and wide-ranging activities, this book changed how creative arts were taught in Italian schools. Gianni Rodari is not only revered as a children’s author, but also remembered for his visionary pedagogy, and it is these two fields he combines in this revolutionary essay collection. Translated into English by acclaimed scholar of folklore and children’s literature Jack Zipes, and with original art from illustrator Matthew Forsythe, this edition of The Grammar of Fantasy is one to live with and return to for its humor, intelligence, and remarkable understanding of children.

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Baron Lamberto is very old, very rich, and very sick. He lives in a villa on a private island in the middle of Lake Orta, tended to by his trusty butler, Anselmo, who keeps track of the baron’s 24 maladies, 24 banks, and endless eccentricities. After a mysterious trip to Egypt, the baron hires six people to take up residence in the attic of his villa. Their only task? To repeat his name, “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto,” throughout the day. Why? It’s anyone’s guess, but, wonder of wonders, Baron Lamberto does appear to be getting better and better, little by little, day by day. But trouble looms when Lamberto’s nefarious nephew Ottavio enters the scene, scheming up a way to get his hands on the baron’s fortune. And things go from bad to worse when a band of 24 bandits (all named Lamberto, too, by the way) lays siege to the baron’s villa and attempt to hold him for ransom. In typical Rodarian fashion, Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto is a thoroughly enjoyable, deeply thought-provoking read. While it playfully skewers the absurdities of the rich, the bureaucracy, the media, and more, it also encourages readers to liberate their imaginations, to expect the unexpected, and to embrace the kind of possibilities that normally only happen in fairy tales.

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Factual as well as whimsical, and humorously illustrated, this is the first English-language publication of the answers given by one of Italy’s greatest and most beloved children’s authors to children’s questions about animals, nature, technology, and culture.

Gianni Rodari is widely regarded as the father of modern Italian children’s literature. A firm believer in the great intelligence of children, he worked both as a teacher and a journalist. For a number of years, children across Italy sent their questions to his weekly newspaper column—questions Rodari answered, most inventively, with rhymes and little poems. Why didn’t he reply with facts alone? Because he wanted to provoke children into thinking about questions, norms, and language itself. The Book of Whys collects a selection of these questions—from «Why does an elephant have a trunk?» to «Why does a car need fuel?» to «Why are we born?»—along with Rodari’s answers, which beautifully serve to highlight the complexities, simplicities, and absurdities of our world.

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Every night, at nine o’clock, wherever he is, Mr. Bianchi, an accountant who often travels for work, calls his daughter and tells her a bedtime story. Set in the 20^th century era of pay phones, each story has to be told in the time that a single coin will buy. One night, it’s the story of a carousel so beloved by children that an old man finally sneaks on to understand why, and as he sails above the world, he does. The next night, it’s a land filled with butter men, roads paved with chocolate, or a young shrimp who has the courage to defy expectations and do things differently. Reminiscent of Scheherazade and One Thousand and One Nights, Gianni Rodari’s Telephone Tales is composed of many stories within a story. Each is set in a different place and time, with unconventional characters and a wonderful mix of reality and fantasy. Awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1970, Gianni Rodari is widely considered to be Italy’s most important children’s author of the 20^th century. Gorgeously illustrated by Italian artist Valerio Vidali​, these stories entertain with wit, surprise, and imagination.

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Catharine Percival is a thoughtful and passionate young woman who finds solace in reading, in the memory of an absent friend, and in walks to a small gazebo, her secret place. But her quiet life is disrupted by the arrival of a frivolous and charming cousin and by the appearance of a young man who awakens in her both new emotions and certain doubts. In this short novel written in her youth, Jane Austen already displays her irony, her sharpness in portraying human character, and her critique of social conventions. An early but surprisingly mature portrait of a heroine who begins to search for her place in the world.

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A collection of fantastic stories by the author of “Frankenstein”, whose influence has reached the literature of our days, as being considered as clear precedents of contemporary science fiction. The book includes: “The mortal immortal”, “Roger Dodsworth, the Reanimated Englishman” and “The Transformation”, with illustrations by the renowned Chilean author Alejandra Acosta.

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1889 narrates the vicissitudes of a family during the British conquest of South Africa, during the so-called Boer War. In the manner of the great sagas, we witness the inevitable and tragic call of the men to the front, while the women, as cohesive members of the family, are left to take care of farms and houses. Stories marked by the constant threat of war and the feeling of loss, yet filled with the rootedness to their land and hopes.
Olive Schreiner, a writer recognized as one of the main precursors of feminist fiction, narrates a story in which she pours out in all its harshness and nostalgia the life experience of the women around her.

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Susan Glaspell’s haunting tale was largely unrecognized at the time of its publication in 1917, as many knew Glaspell primarily from her career as a playwright. However, feminists in the 1970s revived Glaspell’s tale and applauded her ground-breaking exploration of gender inequalities affecting women’s lives in both the public and private spheres. Set in Iowa, it tells the story of a day in the life of a woman named Martha Hale. However, it is not just any day, as on that particular day, Mrs. Hale accompanies her husband and the sheriff to investigate the home of Minnie Wright, a woman accused of murdering her cruel husband. Where men only see “insignificant” objects and details, the protagonists see clues that have gone unnoticed by them and that will make them solve the motive and cause of the “urder. Adapted from his 1916 play Trifles, Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers explores similar themes: the male subjugation of women, sexism in the home and workplace, and the ways in which the law fails to protect women from violence. (The book includes the text of the theatre play “Trifles”, which the story is based on)

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“Contemplation” was the first compilation of texts that Franz Kafka published. It’s a collection of eighteen stories, most of them very short, closer to notes or even prose poems than to conventional narrative. Stories that deal with the separation between the real world and the inner world, the strangeness of being and the conflicts of the individual against society through what we could call parables without a moral or didactic end, but a symbolic one.

In these first stories, the style, the talent and the flashes of light and pain that would characterize the work of the author, one of the fundamental writers of the 20^th century, can already be glimpsed. Bilingual edition Spanish English.

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