Gianni Rodari and Bruno Munari have always paid great attention to the world of children, sharing the purpose of setting images and words free, and making us discover the pleasure of invention, imagination and creativity. Bringing together seemingly distant or even opposite elements, and coming up with unexpected solutions and combinations, they gave new meanings to letters and signs. Their creative paths run parallel to each other for years, and found their meeting point in many books such as Filastrocche in cielo e in terra (“Nursery rhymes up in the sky and down on earth”), La torta in cielo (“The cake in the sky”), Il libro degli errori (“The book of mistakes”), Il pianeta degli alberi di Natale (“The planet of Christmas trees”). In his illustrations for Rodari’s works, Bruno Munari uses his distinctive lightness and essential stroke to recreate all the poetry of Rodari’s stories and rhymes, elevating their imaginative side and their ability to amaze us.
The book features a large selection of Munari’s drawings, accompanied by quotes from Rodari’s books, a comment by Antonio Faeti and unpublished essays by Riccardo Falcinelli and Marco Belpoliti, which set Munari’s drawings in the wider context of the history of children’s books illustration, examining the first reception and the qualities of Munari’s “scribbles”.
A book to read and to look at, to complete with one’s own “skewed marks and scribbles” or, on the contrary, to use as a starting point to invent new stories, drawing inspiration from Munari’s images.
