The Befana's toyshop: A Twelfth Night story;

RODARI, GIANNI

Dent

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories

Considered a visionary in his own time, Rodari's well-respected pedagogical reflections, philosophies, and exercises appear in this book. Each essay is designed to guide the teacher on using fairy tales and folk tales for cognitive development and creative writing.   "This book is a classic manual for educators interested in stimulating children to develop their own writing and reading skills in a manner that will enable children to gain greater autonomy." -- Jack Zipes, from his introduction.

Education & Teaching

Zipes, Jack David

Schools & Teaching

Teachers & Writers Collaborative

Considered a visionary in his own time, Rodari's well-respected pedagogical reflections, philosophies, and exercises appear in this book. Each essay is designed to guide the teacher on using fairy tales and folk tales for cognitive development and creative writing. "This book is a classic manual for educators interested in stimulating children to develop their own writing and reading skills in a manner that will enable children to gain greater autonomy." -- Jack Zipes, from his introduction.

Every night, at nine o'clock, wherever he is, Mr. Bianchi, an accountant who often has to travel for work, calls his daughter and tells her a bedtime story. But since it's still the 20th century world of pay phones, each story has to be told in the time that a single coin will buy. Reminiscent of Scheherazade andOne Thousand and One Nights, Gianni Rodari'sTelephone Tales is composed of many stories--in fact, seventy short stories, with one for each phone call. Each story is set in a different place and a different time, with unconventional characters and a wonderful mix of reality and fantasy. One night, it's a carousel so beloved by children that an old man finally sneaks on to understand why, and as he sails above the world, he does. Or, it's a land filled with butter men, roads paved with chocolate, or a young shrimp who has thecourage to do things in a different way from what he's supposed to do. Awarded the Hans Christian Anderson Award in 1970, Gianni Rodari is widely considered to be Italy's most important children's author of the 20th century. Newly re-illustrated by Italian artist Valerio Vidali(The Forest), Telephone Tales entertains, while questioning and imagining other worlds.

Telephone Tales

Children's Books

Literature & Fiction

Enchanted Lion

A collection of essays from the visionary storyteller Gianni Rodari about fairy tales and folk tales and their great advantages in teaching creative storytelling.
“Rodari grasped children’s need to play with life’s rules by using the grammar of their own imaginations. They must be encouraged to question, challenge, destroy, mock, eliminate, generate, and reproduce their own language and meanings through stories that will enable them to narrate their own lives.” ―Jack Zipes
“I hope this small book,” writes renowned children’s author Gianni Rodari, “can be useful for all those people who believe it is necessary for the imagination to have a place in education; for all those who trust in the creativity of children; and for all those who know the liberating value of the word.”
Full of ideas, glosses on fairytales, stories, and wide-ranging activities, including the fantastic binomial, this book changed how creative arts were taught in Italian schools. Translated into English by acclaimed children’s historian Jack Zipes and illustrated for the first time ever by Matthew Forsythe, this edition of The Grammar of Fantasy is one to live with and return to for its humor, intelligence, and truly deep understanding of children.
A groundbreaking pedagogical work that is also a handbook for writers of all ages and kinds, The Grammar of Fantasy gives each of us a playful, practical path to finding our own voice through the power of storytelling.
Gianni Rodari (1920–1980) grew up in Northern Italy and wrote hundreds of stories, poems, and songs for children. In 1960, he collaborated with the Education Cooperation Movement to develop exercises to encourage children’s creative and critical thinking abilities.
Jack Zipes is a renowned children’s historian and folklorist who has written, translated, and edited dozens of books on fairytales. He is a professor at the University of Minnesota.
Matthew Forsythe lives in Montreal where he draws and paints for picture books, comics, and animations.

Teen & Young Adult

About the Author\nItalian 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.\nBeatrice 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.\nA New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children's Book of 2022 ★ Everyone knows how "Little Red Riding Hood" goes. But Grandpa keeps getting the story all wrong, with hilarious results! 
"Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Little Yellow Riding Hood—" "Not yellow! It's Red Riding Hood!" So begins the story of a grandpa playfully recounting the well-known fairytale—or his version, at least—to his granddaughter. Try as she might to get him back on track, Grandpa keeps on adding things to the mix, both outlandish and mundane! The end result is an unpredictable tale that comes alive as it's being told, born out of imaginative play and familial affection. This spirited picture book will surprise and delight from start to finish, while reminding readers that storytelling is not only a creative act of improvisation and interaction, but also a powerful pathway for connection and love.\nTelling Stories Wrong was written by Gianni Rodari, widely regarded as the father of modern Italian children's literature. It exemplifies his great respect for the intelligence of children and the kind of work he did as an educator, developing numerous games and exercises for children to engage and think beyond the status quo, imagining what happens after the end of a familiar story, or what possibilities open up when a new ingredient is introduced. This book is illustrated with great affection by the illustrious artist Beatrice Alemagna (Child of Glass), who counts Gianni Rodari as one of her "spiritual fathers."

Telling Stories Wrong

Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths

Factual as well as whimsical, and&nbsp;humorously illustrated, this is the first English-language publication of the&nbsp;answers given by one of Italy's greatest and most beloved children's authors to children's questions about animals, nature, technology, and culture. Gianni Rodari is widely regarded as the father of modern Italian children's literature. A firm believer in the great intelligence of children, he worked both as a teacher and a journalist. For a number of years, children across Italy sent their questions to his weekly newspaper column--questions Rodari answered, most inventively, with rhymes and little poems. Why didn't he reply with facts alone?&nbsp;Because he wanted to provoke children into thinking about questions, norms, and language itself.&nbsp;The Book of Whys collects a selection of these questions--from "Why does an elephant have a trunk?" to "Why does a car need fuel?" to "Why are we born?"--along with Rodari's answers, which beautifully serve to highlight the complexities, simplicities,&nbsp;and absurdities of our world. With a fresh translation from Antony Shugaar, who also translated Rodari's&nbsp;Telephone Tales (the 2021&nbsp;Batchelder Award winner), and playful illustrations in colored pencils from artist JooHee Yoon (Beastly Verse;&nbsp;The Tiger Who Would Be King, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2015;&nbsp;Inside Out and Upside Down), The Book of Whys is a playful, surprising, and poetically informative book for&nbsp;all those who are curious about the world and ready to play with&nbsp;the ways things are.

The Book of Whys

Animals

A Daydreamy Child Takes a Walk

Activities, Crafts & Games

A fable for children and adults: a story of life, death, and terrorism—in the grand tradition of Exupéry’s The Little Prince When we first meet 93-year-old millionaire Baron Lamberto, he has been diagnosed with 24 life-threatening ailments—one for each of the 24 banks he owns. But when he takes the advice of an Egyptian mystic and hires servants to chant his name over and over again, he seems to not only get better, but younger. Except then a terrorist group lays siege to his island villa, his team of bank managers has to be bussed in to help with the ransom negotiations, and a media spectacle breaks out . . . A hilarious and strangely moving tale that seems ripped from the headlines—although actually written during the time the Red Brigades were terrorizing Italy—Gianni Rodari’s Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto has become one of Italy’s most beloved fables. Never before translated into English, the novel is a reminder, as Rodari writes, that “there are things that only happen in fairytales.”

Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto

Literary

Melville House

Histoires à la courte paille

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Books by RODARI, GIANNI

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by RODARI, GIANNI. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Befana's toyshop: A Twelfth Night story;

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories

Telephone Tales

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories

Telling Stories Wrong

The Book of Whys

A Daydreamy Child Takes a Walk

Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto

Histoires à la courte paille