Category Archives: Italian and Spanish children’s books

Party Line! Gianni Rodari’s Telephone Tales

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Allow me to introduce you to the greatest Italian children’s book author of the twentieth century—Gianni Rodari, a journalist, life-long Communist, educator, and winner of the 1970 Hans Christian Andersen award.  His poems, short stories, and full-length fantasies influenced by linguistics, surrealism, and the desire for social justice, have been widely translated, but they are sadly little known in the English-speaking world.  So why wait?  Sample two of his  highly inventive “math lessons” from Anthony Shugaar’s glorious translation of Telephone Tales (1980) illustrated by Valerio Vidali and published in 2020 in honor of the centennial of the author’s birth by the extraordinary independent children’s book publisher, Enchanted Lion.

Inventing Numbers

“Shall we invent some numbers?”

“Yes, let’s.  I’ll go first.  Almost-one, almost-tw0, almost-three, almost-four, almost-five, almost-six.”

“That’s not enough.  Listen to this one: a mega million times a billion, a tricyclon of squintillions, a googleplexity of centillions, and an octillion.”

Telephone Tales. New York: Enchanted Lion Books, 2020. (Cotsen RECAP-82788)

“All right then.  I’ll invent a multiplication table: three times one, a barrel of fun; three times two, Kalamazoo; three times three, coffee and tea; three times four, dinosaur, three times five, backward dive; three times six, stacks of bricks, three times seven, manna from heaven; three times eight, Alexander the Great; three times nine, Frankenstein; three times ten, and back again.”

“How much does this pasta cost?”

“Two slaps on the wrist.”

“How far is it from here to Milan?”

“A thousand new miles, one used miles, and seven lemon gumdrops.”

“How much does a teardrop weigh?”

“Depends.  A willful child’s teardrop weights less than the wind, but that of a starving child weighs more than the world”

“How long is this story?”

“Too long.”

“Okay, then, let’s hurry up and invent more numbers.  Here we go, in New York style: foist, secant, and toid, toitytoid and a hunnit and toid, a doity boid plus a noid is the woid.”

 

Upgraded plus Two

“Help! Help!” a poor Ten cried as he took to his heels.

“What’s the matter?  What’s happening to you?”

“Don’t you see?  I’m being chased by a Subtraction.  If it catches me, it’ll be a disaster.”

“Oh, come one!  Don’t you think ‘disaster’ is a little much?”

(Cotsen RECAP-82788)

There, the worst has happened: The monstrous Subtraction has grabbed the Ten, lunging at him, slashing savagely with its razor-sharp sword.  The poor Ten loses one digit, then another.  To its immense good fortune, a foreign car a block long goes by.  The Subtraction turns and stares for a moment to see whether he shouldn’t shorten it a little, and good old Ten takes advantage of the distraction to get away and hides in a doorway.  But now he’s no longer a Ten; he’s just an ordinary Eight, add what’s more he has a nosebleed.

“Poor little thing, what did they do to you?  You got into a fight with your school mates, didn’t you?”

(Cotsen RECAP-82788)

“Heavens above, everyone run for your lives!”  The high-pitched voice is sweet and compassionate, but its owner is Division itself.  The unfortunate Eight whispers, “Good evening,” in a faint tone, and tries to turn and go, but Division is quicker than Eight, and with a single clip of her scissors, she cuts him into two: Four and Four.  She puts one of the Fours inside her pocket, and the  one takes off running, racing back onto the street, where it leaps onto a passing trolley.

“A moment ago, I was a Ten,” he sobs, “and now just look at me!  A Four!”

The pupils on the trolley all hasten to get some distance between themselves and the Four.  None of them want anything to do with him.  The trolley driver mutters, “ Certain people really ought to have enough common sense to go on foot.”

“But it’s not my fault!” the ex-Ten shouts through his tears.

“Sure, blame it on the cat.  That’s what they all say.”

The Four get off at the next stop, red as a red cherry candy.

Uh oh!  He’s pulled another one of his pranks—he’s stepped on someone’s toe.

“I’m sorry!  I’m so, so sorry, Signora!”

But the lady isn’t angry.  In fact she smiles up at him.  Well, well, well, looky who it is!  None other than Multiplication!

She has a heart of gold and can’t stand the sight of unhappy people.  So right then and there, she multiplies the Four by Three.  Now, he’s a magnificent Twelve, ready to count a whole dozen eggs.

“Hurray!” cries Twelve.  I’ve been increased!  Increased by two.!

 

What Crocodiles Eat for Dinner Besides Clocks, Pirate Captains, and Elephants’ Children

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The number of crocodiles and alligators in picture books have proliferated over the last few decades for no obvious reason.  Increasing the representation of reptiles might be a good thing if we think their stories should be told alongside those of creatures with fur and feathers.  They aren’t the usual friendly beasts in children’s  books.  Just watch a crocodile bring down a wildebeest on a BBC Earth or a YouTube video of a gigantic alligator marching across a Florida golf course.

F. D. Bedford’s illustration of Captain Hook’s demise from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy (1911).

Famous literary crocodile characters tend to be wily predators, like the ticking one waiting for its chance to nab the rest of Captain Hook or the soft-spoken “large-pattern leather ulster” that grabs the Elephant Child’s nose to drown him for dinner.  After its fifteen-minutes of fame in Paris as the Egyptian sensation, the reptile in Fred Marcellino’s I, Crocodile (1999) eludes Napoleon’s cook by slithering down a manhole into the sewer, where it can pick off unwary merveilleuses for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.Hippos can take on crocodiles in nature, a situation playfully recreated in Catherine Rayner’s Solomon and Mortimer (2016), where two bored male juveniles find themselves at the receiving end of their own practical joke.

Solomon and Mortimer. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2020. (Cotsen)

Humans fare less well. Thomas in Patricia McKissack’s A Million Fish…More or Less (1992) illustrated by Dena Schutzer doesn’t stand a chance against Old Atoo, the grand-pere of the Bayou Clapateaux’s alligators, when he claims share of the enormous catch.

A Million Fish…More or Less. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. (Cotsen 41816)

Girls seem better at eluding crocodile incursions than boys. In Sylviane Donnio’s I’d Really Like to Eat a Child (2007) illustrated by Dorothee de Monfried, a girl so effortlessly repels scrawny Achilles’ attack that he realizes that he will have to consume mountains of bananas to grows big enough to catch tasty young humans.

I’d Really Like to Eat a Child. New York: Random House, ©2007. (Cotsen)

Poling through the bayou in her flat boat, the girl in Candace Fleming’s Who Invited You? (2001) illustrated by cartoonist George Booth has to let a heap of bold animals cadge rides. The low-riding boat catches the attention of “a-smilin’, a-slinkin’, a-blinky-blanky-winkin’” old gator who tries to clamber in too.  When the original nine freeloaders tell him there’s no more space, he just grins as wide as he can, “That’s all right…’cause I have room for YOU.” The girl escapes without a scratch.

Who Invited You? New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, ©2001. (Cotsen)

The heroine of author-illustrator Sophie Gilmore’s Little Doctor and the Fearless Beast (2019) runs a jungle clinic catering to sick crocodiles. One day Big Mean, the largest and surliest of them all, turns up at the door and isn’t especially uncooperative.  While the monster takes a cat nap, the little doctor finally succeeds in prying open her jaws.  By falling accidentally into Big Mean’s mouth, she finds the real patients, little hatchlings that need untangling from plastic waste.  For freeing them without a second thought about ng her own safety, Big Mean pronounces the little doctor  a “fearless beast…who could not rest until she had helped her fellow creature.”

Little Doctor and the Fearless Beast. Toronto, ON: Owlkids Books, [2019]. (Cotsen)

Of all the scene-stealing reptiles, the one in Laura Amy Schlitz’s Princess Cora and the Crocodile (2017) takes the prize.  The princess begs her fairy godmother for a dog and receives a crocodile instead, who has been charged with rescuing the princess from her overly fastidious nanny and slave-driving royal parents.  The crocodile will impersonate the princess and refrain from biting or eating anyone so she can have a day off to do exactly what she pleases.  During her absence, he stays more or less within parameters, but uses deliberately inappropriate methods of sensitizing the nanny, queen, and king to her discontents.  But they do set the stage for Princess Cora to calmly renegotiate the terms of her daily routine, which earns him in perpetuity a place in the royal lily pond and all the chocolate and vanilla cream puffs he can gobble up.

Princess Cora and the Crocodile. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2017. (Cotsen)

Princess Cora and the Crocodile.

The gaping jaws need never be opened to make a wonderful picture book starring crocodiles, as the last two featured titles demonstrate. The quiet crocodile Fossil, created by Natacha Andriamirado and Delphine Renon, cheerfully plays along with his small herd of animal friends who clamber onto his back to form and reform into living sculptures until commanded to roar and send them flying.

The Quiet Crocodile. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2017. (Cotsen)

Instead of imagining a friendly crocodile at play, Giovanna Zoboli and Mariachiara di Giorgio celebrate the daily routine of a contented working reptile in their wordless Professional Crocodile (2017).  If you want to know his place of employment, you’ll have to read the book!

Professional Crocodile. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2017. (Cotsen)

With apologies to Bernard Waber and Maurice Sendak for not having room for Lyle, Lyle Crocodile and No Fighting, No Biting!