The Book of Whys

Italian 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. JooHee Yoon is an artist and educator whose practice spans illustration, design, and printmaking. Much of her work is influenced by her time experimenting with traditional printmaking techniques. Her drawings can often be seen in publications such as the New York Times, and she has exhibited widely both in the United States and abroad. In 2015 her first picture book, a contemporary take on the James Thurber classic The Tiger Who Would Be King, was named one of the New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Children’s Books. Currently she teaches in the illustration department at RISD, along with working on publishing projects. Antony Shugaar is a writer and translator, working out of Italian and French. He once interviewed the creator of Topo Gigio.