Il Mignolo for newitalianbooks – December 2024
A selection of books for children and young readers

The I bohemini-BIMBUMBAM series by Bohem Press Italia, designed by art director and graphic designer Pietro Barone and written by Carmen Savino, presents very interesting and convincing proposals in which noises are associated with small stories: the protagonists are animals that interact with the things they encounter through the noises or sounds they make.

The flat colours and graphic style help very young children in the precise visualisation of each object. At the end of the book, a double page shows the journey made by the protagonist.

From the age of one

The I bohemini-BIMBUMBAM series by Bohem Press Italia, designed by art director and graphic designer Pietro Barone and written by Carmen Savino, presents very interesting and convincing proposals in which noises are associated with small stories: the protagonists are animals that interact with the things they encounter through the noises or sounds they make.

The flat colours and graphic style help very young children in the precise visualisation of each object. At the end of the book, a double page shows the journey made by the protagonist.

From the age of one

La Margherita’s Le mie prime paroline series presents two proposals by Daniela Costa, an illustrator from Turin. Commonly used words are inserted into sentences spoken by the child protagonist – who is never defined by gender – and the drawing shows the object seen through the boy or girl’s gaze: in practice the reader never sees the boy or girl as the protagonist, but looks through his or her eyes at the objects and the surrounding environment. On the left is the word with the represented object and the sentence in context and on the right the complete image. The colours are pastel, the pictures rich in detail: it is an excellent example of a bridge-book from board books to early illustrated books. An extra element enriches the full-bodied hardback: in the left-hand margin we see the environments or seasons in which the story takes place, making the reading experience very complete.

From the age of two

La Margherita’s Le mie prime paroline series presents two proposals by Daniela Costa, an illustrator from Turin. Commonly used words are inserted into sentences spoken by the child protagonist – who is never defined by gender – and the drawing shows the object seen through the boy or girl’s gaze: in practice the reader never sees the boy or girl as the protagonist, but looks through his or her eyes at the objects and the surrounding environment. On the left is the word with the represented object and the sentence in context and on the right the complete image. The colours are pastel, the pictures rich in detail: it is an excellent example of a bridge-book from board books to early illustrated books. An extra element enriches the full-bodied hardback: in the left-hand margin we see the environments or seasons in which the story takes place, making the reading experience very complete.

From the age of two

Carlo – an elegant mouse with a tail and rosy little paws – likes flowers, bar none; and he also likes to immerse himself in the wonderful world of the Fratelli Lombrichi mail-order catalogue, where one day he discovers and buys a super fertiliser for incredible blooms. The pages of this little book are thus filled with geraniums and cosmeas, golden buttons and nigellas, campanulas and octobrines – a joy for those who want to look for and recognise them. Mario Onnis illustrates a small catalogue of many flowers and objects: minute objects with simple shapes to play with, to point at and name.

From the age of three

‘I am a new creature and I live in the forest”: this is how Arturo introduces himself, a child with round features, a small mouth, a barely noticeable nose, two flowers in his shaggy black hair and a colourful face with small elven ears. It is impossible not to be surprised by his animal beauty, he born of the love between a swallow and a she-wolf.

Guia Risari and Cinzia Ghigliano, for Splendide Creature, imagine a forest as the setting for a story of universal, multifaceted and, in some ways, mythological love. A forest where no union is impossible: bears and squirrels, foxes and dormice, dragonflies and fish, swallows and she-wolves from which splendid creatures with unique and precious characteristics are born.

From the age of six

‘Crac’ is the sound we associate with fracture, with the idea that something is breaking; proceeding by association of ideas, we think of the end, of destruction, of disappearance. But what if ‘Crac’ is the sound of something being born? The philosophical premise of this illustrated popular science book seamlessly blends with elements of fiction, making it read almost like a story. The history of the universe, and that of each of us, is the story of a series from CRAC: because without destruction, nothing new can be created.

Crac is a book that, while also intended for younger readers, is absolutely suitable for secondary school students.

From the age of seven

In this book everything revolves around the apartment block in Via del Rosmarino 31. Here, on the first floor, lives Margot, Rita’s grandmother, and it is where, one day, a terrifying scream is heard: a very precious necklace has been stolen. Everyone in the block of flats is suspected, everyone is questioned. Grandmother and granddaughter, novice detectives, will have their hands full. Surprise ending. Irony, rhythm, suspense, puzzles and mysterious characters make this story perfect for young readers, just like all the other titles in the Piccole Piume di Pelledoca series.

From the age of eight

The eel is a mysterious animal: why does it change colour at a certain point in its life and only then assume a definite sex? How does it do it? And above all: wouldn’t it be fairer if the same thing happened to human beings? This at least is the thought of the narrating voice, a voice that is thirteen years old, a body that is changing and asking existential questions, and a best friend, Magdalena, who is perhaps no longer just a friend.

Alice Keller offers us a fast-paced glimpse of life, letting us into the confused thoughts of teenagers who can do nothing but question: Who am I? Like the eel, the teenager slips away, does not let herself be categorised or pigeonholed. Our Little Girl still has some time to find answers.

From the age of eleven

Sophie is a little girl who, every morning before going to school, goes for a chat with her grandfather. Her grandfather died a few years earlier, but Sophie is convinced he can hear her and so she goes to his grave. One day the girl disappears, throwing her mother, of course, into despair: for several years a serial killer has been running around the town and eluding capture, and the woman fears he has kidnapped her daughter. In reality, the little girl has been conjured away by two young and inexperienced ghosts during a ‘vivisection’; catapulted into a parallel world, Sophie will be involved in a real murder mystery.

The novel is remarkable for the light touch and sweetness Brunialti uses in recounting family relationships and, thus, also death; because death enters family relationships not by breaking them but, undoubtedly, by changing them.

From the age of twelve

In a future post-war world, with a much-reduced population, the New Lords bring up young people locked in their rooms, with an exclusively virtual sociality in the company of a digital bracelet equipped with Artificial Intelligence. The only obligation the kids have is ten days of school every three months. If the boys miss school, however, they are picked up by the guards and taken to a maximum-security prison where the forced sociability rivals the physical violence in its brutality.

The protagonists of this adventure—five boys and girls—overcome every obstacle: they execute a daring escape from the prison and reach the Reserves, where they might finally find a chance at salvation.With its dry, concentrated prose, this novel delivers an absolutely surprising ending.

From the age of fourteen

A book of rhymes written like a ping pong between two accomplished and different poetic voices around the theme of the beginning and the end, the many beginnings and the many endings that punctuate our lives, from the apparently simpler experiences – such as the beginning and the end of an ice-cream, of a pencil, of a machine – to the denser ones, such as the end of weeping, of boundaries, of the self. The poems dedicated to Beginning and End , where the end ‘that no one wants to say’ peeps out, close. Vecchini and Tognolini take the floor on each theme, addressing now the beginning, now the end, playing the game of poetry, rhythm, sound and an obliquity of gaze that almost always manages not to be flattened by the content.