LITTLE ONES
“Dagfrid. A Viking girl”By Agnès Mathieu-Daudé and Olivier Tallec (Superbaba, 43 pages, € 7.50) is an exciting story. There are many things that irritate Dagfrid, starting with his name. The life of a Viking girl is not so much fun: you have to roll your braids over your ears, wear very long and uncomfortable clothes, eat dry fish from morning to night. Well, all the Vikings eat that, to tell the truth. But Dagfrid just doesn’t like it, just like she doesn’t like the fact that girls can’t go and discover America and that, well, that’s extremely annoying! However, things are about to change, because Dagfrid is bored with dry fish and braids rolled up on her ears … Age of reading: from 7 years.
“The boredom of endless afternoons”By Gael Faye and Hippolyte (Bompiani, 15 euros) is a hymn to free time. «As a child I was lucky enough to get bored – writes the author -. I had no school in the afternoon and there were no screens or television at my house. So I had to learn to field treasures of imagination to invent games and pastimes … Of those motionless days I keep the memory of an enchanted period in which I was able to fill the chest of my imagination to the brim. The boredom of my childhood afternoons was a journey in which time belonged to me, a space in which I made immense dreams ».
“The treasure of Tricorno“By Florence Parry Heide, illustrated by Edward Gorey (Bompiani, 15 euros), is the story of Tricorno, an obedient child and, when his father tells him to secure the dollar he has just given him, he does it: hides in the tree in the garden. Imagine his surprise when he soon discovers that the leaves are turning into bills. For once, the money really grows on trees, indeed, on his tree. Tricorn can finally buy the things he likes best: comics, baseball cards and chewing gum. He is really a prodigy and Tricorno would like to share it with everyone, if only adults could listen …
MEDIUM
“With you, dad”Is a book to be written together and always kept together (Fabbri, 12 euros); talks about the good time you will spend together to observe and explore unknown places and flavors, invent secret stories and languages, challenge each other in absurd competitions, look at new places you thought you knew, but maybe not. And when you have filled it in, messed up and colored it, you will find a little treasure in your hand: a diary of memories, of all the fantastic moments spent with your dad, to browse whenever you want. Arm yourself with imagination, pencils, a spirit of adventure and… let’s start!
“Fear of the lion”By Chiara and Davide Morosinotto (Rizzoli, 216 pages, 16 euros) explains why all animals are frightened and why nature is fine with it. Like it or not, hunters are fundamental to the animal world, where everything is based on the relationship between the predator and its prey, between those who run to feed and those who run away to save their lives. And those who run away to save themselves experience an emotion that we humans also know well: fear. “All animals are afraid and for this reason they adapt their behavior to situations and learn to co-live, in the sense of living together. By studying fear we can understand how ecosystems work and how our whole world works, after all ”explains Chiara Morosinotto, an evolutionary biologist specialized in animal behavior. To show us how fear often affects the life of all creatures, including man, in unimaginable ways, Chiara guides us through her research, placing her gaze as a scientist and an attentive observer of reality at the service of us readers. The result is a rich and engaging volume, written together with his brother Davide, where every experience is an adventure, every discovery a story.
“Let your wonder shine”By Mickol Lopez and Daniele Marzano (Fabbri, 145 pages, € 15.90) is a letter to our children and every child, a hymn to every creature to be special in its own way and to have faith in its own uniqueness. When that very thin pink line appears on the pregnancy test, that’s where the greatest and most shocking journey into the unknown begins: the arrival of a child, which brings with it uncontrollable and conflicting emotions. Mickol and Daniele Marzano know this well, young parents enthusiastic about life and in love with their three children who, with a two-voice narration, in the form of a letter addressed to their children, tell the joys and fears of being parents with great honesty , humor and a pinch of poetry, between a clumsy diaper change and a lullaby sung in the middle of the night. In this book they lay bare as parents, but also as human beings, sharing anxieties and frailties, but also plans and hopes with readers, and they speak out for a motto for their children, which also becomes a universal message for all mothers and fathers who have been following them for some time: face life driving without a license, in your own way, even if you don’t know how to hold the wheel, or where to go. Always be yourself and make your dreams come true, everyone!
“The penguin without a tailcoat and other tales“By Silvio D’Arzo, edited by Roberto Carnero, illustrated by Franco Matticchio (Bompiani, 477 pages, 16 euros) collects four long stories that reveal the incursion of a great writer of our twentieth century, Silvio D’Arzo, into children’s literature. The one that gives the title to the collection has as its protagonist Limpo, a penguin born all white in a very modest family, who cannot afford to buy him a tailcoat to go to school. Mocked and dismissed by his companions, the little one decides to leave to earn the necessary and be able to become like the others. Designed for a young audience but – as always happens with great literature – suitable for readers of any age, the adventures of Limpo and the other three stories presented here are enriched by the beautiful illustrations by Franco Matticchio and by an essay by Roberto Carnero that tells (to older readers) the little known D’Arzo for kids.
BIG
“8 days to get smart”By Raffaella Fenoglio, author from Bordighera (Giunti, 160 pages, 10 euros), is the story of Kamyla, who is almost fourteen years old and has a very bad reputation. At school, in fact, for everyone she is the Impedita, the shy, nerd, passionate about comics and photography, the girl who has never kissed a boy. And this thing has to change. With the help of her two best friends, she tries to change herself, to leave the freshness and naivety behind and become Smart. Smart as Regina and her group of winners, the “spicce”. And while her mother is hospitalized for complications from a delicate pregnancy, Kamyla changes her dress, cuts her hair, learns to smoke and flirts with the guy she has a crush on: Sergej. But the mother’s condition worsens and she herself no longer recognizes herself. What is she doing? Is she transforming herself to please a person who doesn’t know who she really is?
“Crossed fates. 1944. Young people, heroes, rebels”By Paul Dowswell, the author of the“ Boy from Berlin ”(Feltrinelli, 195 pages, 15 euros), is set during the Second World War. Marijke lives in the Netherlands. Yvie in London and Tomasz in Germany. But the desire to live, the refusal to give up and the rebellion against evil keep them – kids who in normal circumstances would have been just that, kids – from standing by and being overwhelmed. Instead, being young in 1944 for them means fighting, making the world a better place and giving themselves the possibility of a future.
“Some nights I watch you sleep. Story of a family with three passports”By Antonio Paciletti (Rizzoli, 137 pages, 15.50 euros) is a story of hope and integration. “So, when will a grandchild make it?” is the question that Beatriz and Antonio have heard repeated for a long time by a slender, but obstinate aunt. And they are not saved even when they decide to adopt a child, because at that point the question, no less pressing, immediately becomes: «So, when will your child arrive?». And to say that behind this question there is a whole world, the world of a father destined to fall in love with his child, whom he met one day in an orphanage in Masango, Burundi. There are the sessions with the psychologists, the piles of paperwork, the endless courses, the meetings with the judges and other aspiring parents, and there is the fateful phone call that, despite the four years of waiting, throws Antonio and Beatriz into panic: will we be ready? Only then, finally, is there life with Enock, an open, generous, very lively child. A child who quickly learns two new languages and more quickly teaches his parents to live their new family, intertwining stories and multiplying emotions. With irresistible irony, Antonio recounts a path that is like a long and steep climb on a bicycle, between bends and holes, forced stops, difficult resumes and continuous slowdowns.
FOR ADULTS
“Children of the internet. How to help them grow between narcissism, sexting, cyberbullying and social withdrawal“By Matteo Lancini and Loredana Cirillo (Erickson, 144 pages, € 16.50) is an agile illustrated guide that responds to the request for help from parents of preteens and adolescents on managing the relationship between young people, the Internet and technological tools, everyday tools that, while influencing our children, are part of their social context. Through ten thematic chapters, the authors offer parents a path of reflection to learn how to support their children in their relationship with the digital world, in an increasingly online society and whose boundaries between real and virtual have been broken down.
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