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Gianni Rodari

Gianni Rodari (Omegna, 23 October 1920 – Rome, 14 April 1980) was a Piedmontese writer, journalist and educationalist, considered the author who most deeply renewed Italian children's literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Born on the shores of Lake Orta, he lived and worked mainly in Rome, but his major work was published in Turin, where from 1960 Giulio Einaudi editore published his best-known books, from Favole al telefono to Grammatica della fantasia[1]. In 1970 he became the first Italian to receive the Hans Christian Andersen Award[2].

Omegna and early years

His father Giuseppe was a baker's worker who had later taken over a bakery in Omegna, then in the province of Novara[3]; his mother, Maddalena Aricocchi, was a deeply religious woman. After his father's death in 1929, the family moved to Gavirate, in the Varese area. Rodari spent two years at the seminary of San Pietro Martire in Seveso (1931-1933), then earned a teaching diploma as a private candidate in 1937 and enrolled at the Catholic University of Milan, without completing a degree[1]. As a young man he cultivated a passion for music, studying the violin, and for reading[4].

In 1941 he passed the competitive examination to become a teacher and taught in elementary schools in the Varese area[1][2]. Called up by the Italian Social Republic in December 1943 and assigned to the military medical corps in Milan, in May 1944 he went underground with a Garibaldi brigade and joined the Italian Communist Party. On 25 April 1945 he was among the partisans who, on the road between Milan and Como, stopped the painter Mario Sironi: recognizing him, Rodari signed his safe-conduct pass[1].

The journalist

The postwar years made Rodari a party journalist. As a PCI official, he directed L'Ordine nuovo, the weekly of the Communist Federation of Varese; in 1947 he was called to L'Unità in Milan, where he remained until 1958 and ran a column for young readers in which his first nursery rhymes were born[1]; from 1949 the column was titled «La domenica dei Piccoli»[2]. In 1950 he moved to Rome to found and direct, with Dina Rinaldi, Il Pioniere, a Communist weekly for children; this was followed from 1953 by Avanguardia, the weekly of the Communist Youth Federation, and from December 1958 by Paese Sera, where he worked until his death[1]. From 1952 to 1967 he also wrote for the weekly Noi Donne, with articles on schooling such as Siamo per la classe mista (1964) and È possibile una scuola senza pagella? (1965)[5].

His first books, Il libro delle filastrocche and Il romanzo di Cipollino, were published in 1951[2]. Cipollino was especially successful in the Soviet Union, where Rodari was translated starting in the 1950s and where the book remained the most widely read for decades[6].

The Einaudi author

His relationship with the Turin publishing house began with a letter. In 1952 Rodari wrote to Italo Calvino, proposing an essay on Pinocchio for Einaudi: "Pinocchio seems to me a perfect example of a fable and a perfect example of realism"[1]. In 1960 Rodari became an Einaudi author with Filastrocche in cielo e in terra[1].

It was Giulio Einaudi who paired him with Bruno Munari, the publishing house's graphic consultant, who came up to the Turin offices every two weeks; Rodari stayed in Rome, and the two worked mainly by letter and telephone. Together they signed the most recognizable books in the catalogue for a decade: after the Filastrocche came Favole al telefono (1962), Il libro degli errori (1964) and La torta in cielo (1966)[7]. In 1973 Einaudi published Grammatica della fantasia and Novelle fatte a macchina, in 1978 C'era due volte il barone Lamberto; the last book he sent to the publishing house, Il gioco dei quattro cantoni, came out in 1980[1].

"Grammatica della fantasia" and schooling

Grammatica della fantasia is his main theoretical work[3]. In an article for the ninetieth anniversary of his birth, in La Stampa, Ernesto Ferrero described it as a method for learning to invent stories through wordplay, rhyme, surrealism and even the productive use of error[8]. The Dizionario biografico degli Italiani calls it the book with which Rodari claimed, for everyone and not only for young readers, "the right to invent"[1]. The Enciclopedia Italiana places his importance in children's literature alongside that of Collodi and Edmondo De Amicis[3].

Schooling remained his field. From 1968 to 1977 he directed the Giornale dei genitori, taking over its leadership after the death of Ada Gobetti, widow of Piero Gobetti[1][6]; in 1968 and in 1977 he sided with students in protest[6]. In 1976 he was, together with Marisa Musu, among the founders of the Coordinamento genitori democratici[9]. In the 1970s, when many parents blamed television and Japanese cartoons for corrupting the young, he urged teachers to work with material produced by the small screen rather than censor it[6].

Death and legacy

Rodari died in Rome on 14 April 1980 of cardiac arrest, three days after surgery on his left leg[1]. He had written about seventy books, translated into many languages[2]. Some of his verses have entered everyday language, even appearing in ministers' holiday greetings: "if we join hands / miracles will happen / and Christmas Day / will last all year long"[6].

Omegna, in Piedmont, has named after him the Parco della Fantasia Gianni Rodari and a children's literature festival held every October for about ten days, which awards the Premio Rodari, reaching its thirteenth edition in 2026[10].

Pages linking here

Related articles: Lake Orta

Sources

  1. Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 88 (Mariarosa Rossitto) —
  2. Il Post — 23 October 2020
  3. Treccani – Enciclopedia Italiana, V Appendice (Emanuele Trevi) —
  4. Focus Junior
  5. Noi Donne
  6. Il Post — 25 December 2022
  7. Il Libraio
  8. Il Post — 22 October 2010
  9. Coordinamento Genitori Democratici
  10. Comune di Omegna – Festival Gianni Rodari

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