A Daydreamy Child Takes a Walk

Author

Gianni Rodari

Illustrator

Beatrice Alemagna

Publication Date

October 24, 2023

Genre / Grade Band

Fiction / 2^nd − 3^rd

Language

English

Format

Picture Book

Hardcover

Description

Written by Gianni Rodari, the father of modern Italian children's literature, and charmingly illustrated by award-winning artist Beatrice Alemagna, this bright, sweet story reminds us what children are really like in the most essential and beautiful way!

Little Giovanni is always daydreaming, always paying attention to the small miracles that lead him to lose track of the big picture. So even though he's promised his mama to keep his eyes open on his walk, he can't help but get distracted. Cheerful, carefree, and curious, Giovanni literally loses himself as he discovers the wide, wonderful world around him. Here, Rodari highlights the gorgeous way children give themselves over to their attention to the world by having Giovanni lose parts of himself as he walks along. Should his mama worry? No! Because: "That's just the way children are."

Following her New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Telling Stories Wrong, Beatrice Alemagna returns to illustrate another of Gianni Rodari's delightful stories from Telephone Tales. With a Batchelder Award winning translation by Antony Shugaar, this classic story from one of Italy's most beloved and important authors of children's literature asserts the power of flights of fancy and the value of childlike wonder.

Publication date

October 24, 2023

Genre

Fiction

ISBN-13

9781592704033

Publisher

Enchanted Lion Books

BISAC categories

Library of Congress categories

Picture books
Imagination
Mindfulness

Kirkus

Heart, humor, and more than a spoonful of weirdness help this mother/son tale ring oddly true.

ALA/Booklist

These improbable events—when a child casually sheds body parts during a meditative meander, and indulgent adults chalk it up to childish whimsy—offer a delightful flight of fancy, where even the odd and inexplicable are met with equanimity and good cheer.

Publishers Weekly

In a fanciful picture book about a child with his head in the clouds, Italian author and Andersen Medalist Rodari (1920-1980) focuses on easily diverted Giovanni, a well-intentioned boy who goes out for a walk. "Have fun, Giovanni," his mother notes, "don't get distracted along the way." Giovanni means to follow her instructions, and checks for the first block or so to make sure he hasn't lost anything ("Am I all here? Yes, I am!"), but soon afterward he begins to stare "at shop windows, cars, the clouds," until a passerby accosts him: "Oh, little one, you need to pay attention. Look! You've already lost a hand." As Giovanni continues missing body parts, and neighbors return them to his mother, surreal collages from Alemagna (Telling Stories Wrong) render the pale-skinned figures as doll-like, so that the detachment of limbs and features registers as comic rather than traumatic. When Giovanni's mother bemoans her child's inattention, each neighbor comforts her ("That's just the way children are") until, when the child returns, "cheerful as a sparrow," he is restored to his original state. Giovanni's distraction doesn't hurt anyone--not even Giovanni--in this conflict-free, daydreamy tale that centers a child letting go of care. Ages 4-7. (Oct.)

Gianni Rodari

Italian author Gianni Rodari wrote many beloved children's books and was awarded the prestigious Andersen Prize. But he was also an educator of paramount importance in Italy and an activist who understood the liberating power of the imagination. He is one of the twentieth century's greatest authors for children, and Italy's greatest. Influenced by French surrealism and linguistics, Rodari stressed the importance of poetic language, metaphor, made-up language, and play. At a time when schooling was all about factual knowledge, Rodari wrote The Grammar of Fantasy, a radically imaginative book about storytelling and play. He was a forerunner of writing techniques such as the "fantastic binomial" and the utopian, world engendering "what if...." The relevance of Rodari's works today lies in his poetics of imagination, his humanist yet challenging approach to reality, and his themes, such as war and peace, immigration, injustice, inequality, and liberty. Forty years after his death, Rodari's writing is as powerful and innovative as ever. He died in Rome in 1980.

Beatrice Alemagna has written and illustrated dozens of children's books, which have received numerous awards all over the world and have been translated into 14 languages. The author-illustrator of two New York Times Best Illustrated books, she has also been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award seven times and shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award twice. Enchanted Lion has published four of her picture books: The Wonderful Fluffy Little Squishy; Child of Glass; Telling Stories Wrong; and the forthcoming You Can't Kill Snow White, a picture book for teens and adults, published under Enchanted Lion's Unruly imprint. Born in Bologna, Italy, Alemagna lives and works in Paris, France.

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