BCBF Newsline
Gianni Rodari at the 2010 Children's Bookfair
One of the main themes of the 2010 edition of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair is the contemporary relevance of Gianni Rodari’s work.
This is only fitting since 2010 marks 90 years since Rodari’s birth (1920 in Omegna), 30 years since his death (1980 in Rome) and 40 years after he received the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the world’s most prestigious prize for children’s literature.
Gianni Rodari remains the only Italian writer to have received this award, equalled only by Roberto Innocenti who received the Illustrators’ Award in 2008.
Over these 40 years Gianni Rodari’s readership has broadened to many different countries and audiences. His books have been translated into 50 languages, from the most commonly spoken (English, Portuguese, Spanish, German, French, Russian, Japanese and Chinese) to the less well known (Kabardine, Croatian, Czech, Latvian, Albanian and others).
This popularity is fully understandably since as both poet and writer – not just for young readers – Rodari gets full marks on Italo Calvino’s checklist of attributes required of genuine literature: “lightness of touch, good pace, exactness, visibility, and multiplicity”. It is a view shared by acclaimed critics for whom Rodari is a children’s ‘classic’ attuned to the child’s imaginative world and so able to involve, stimulate and educate.
Galleria Immagini
EXHIBITION
The Grammar of the Figures
The Grammar of Figures is the tribute Bologna Children’s Book Fair organised to commemorate one of the leading figures in 20th Century children’s literature. Gianni Rodari won the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1970, the year in which Maurice Sendak was given the award for illustration. Rodari’s work is now more alive than ever and enjoys international acclaim as testified by the translations of his seminal essay The Grammar of Fantasy and the many editions of picture books that have found an infinite source of inspiration in Rodari’s stories. The texts take on myriad colours and shapes through the illustrations submitted by more than eight hundred competitors comprising professional artists and young students flanked by internationally renowned illustrators from the world of publishing.
This international illustration competition has been a resounding success with 846 entries from all over the world.
The exhibition, curated by Giannino Stoppani Cooperativa Culturale, will be set at the Service Centre of the Fair, in the area dedicated to Illustrations, and it will present 44 illustrators, of which 33 have been selected for the Competition and 11 chosen for their illustrations in a recently published picture book of Gianni Rodari.
Over the years, many illustrators have interpreted Rodari’s stories displaying a wide range of sensitivities in the way they flank the text and depict the characters. The exhibition gives an overview of the different ways of approaching Rodari’s work. It also throws interesting light on how his stories are “seen” by those from completely different cultural backgrounds who have got to know and love his work only in translation.
| Edizioni EL - Einaudi Ragazzi - Emme Edizioni
responded enthusiastically to the proposal from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair to ask one of the illustrators selected for the Grammar of Figures exhibition to make the illustrations for a story by Gianni Rodari for publication in the near future. The decision was so difficult that in the end the publisher chose two artists. |
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The illustrations for one story will be commissioned from Vitali Konstantinov and those of another story from Ikuko Takeuchi. These two artists have been chosen because, judging from the work they have done to date, the Publisher felt they would be capable of interpreting with elegance, irony, conciseness and poetry the distinctive spirit that made Gianni Rodari one of the greatest children’s authors of the twentieth century.
Galleria Immagini
Wednesday, 24th March, 10 a.m.
Sala Notturno - Centro Servizi (Blocco D)
| Gianni Rodari: not just a Children's Classic | Welcome Antonio Concina Mayot of Orvieto |
| Introduction: | Emy Beseghi, Professor of Children’s Literature, University of Bologna |
| Presentations by: | Tullio De Mauro, Professor Emeritus, University of Rome1 Antonio Faeti, Former Professor, University of Bologna Pino Boero, Professor of Children’s Literature, University of Genoa |
| Chairman and Concluding remarks: | Mario Di Rienzo, Director, Centro Studi Rodari, Orvieto |
| Simultaneous translation will be provided |
Wednesday, 24th March, 3 p.m.
Sala Notturno - Centro Servizi (Blocco D)
The Grammar of Fantasy: translating Rodari
| Speakers: | Francine Bouchet (La joie de Lire), Teresa Duran i Armengol (Catalan translator), Giulia Massini (Department of Italian Studies, University of Bologna) Alain Serres (Rue du Monde) Mária Štefanková (Slovak translator) Edgardo Zaghini (Outside In) |
| Chairperson: | Simona Mambrini |
| Simultaneous translation will be provided |
Tuesday, 23th March, 4.30 p.m.
Translators Centre - Hall 25 Booth B/93
Playing on words and language. Rodari and the limerick
A talk with Alessandra Repossi
