From Thursday 6 on newsstands with the newspaper the second title of the series for children. The Smei e gli Smufi by Julia Donaldson a story that recalls Romeo and Juliet
Never ever play with Smufi! They snore in holes, like truffles grandparents teach their granddaughters. Never ever play with a Smea, they have weird hair! a bad idea! grandmothers recommend to grandchildren. The starting situation of the book The Smei and the Smufi, new title of the Albumini series for preschool children to be released on Thursday 6 January with Corriere, chiara: Smei and Smufi live on the same planet but can’t stand each other, indeed they hate each other. After all, there could not have been two more different peoples in the universe: the former have red skin, love to splash in water and eat loaves; the latter are blue, they drink tea, they love to jump and make holes in the earth. But what if a Smufo meets a Smea?
The story for children written by Julia Donaldson (London, 1948) and illustrated by Axel Scheffler (Hamburg, 1957), which is somewhat reminiscent of the famous story of Romeo and Juliet. Here, however, the ending is not tragic as in Shakespeare, but happy and positive: Capulets and Montecchi of this strange alien planet will learn from the example of smea Greta and the smufo Dante to know each other, to respect each other and to love each other. In the story, the two protagonists meet for the first time by chance in the Great Wood, a place par excellence where the protagonists of children’s stories experience the good and the bad of the world outside the safe confines of their everyday life. To break the ice, writes Julia Donaldson, she tells him a story, he explains hip hop to her; she writes him poetry, he plays rock to her. The immediate feeling, but the families are against it and the two decide to get married and run away together in the spaceship – Dante at the controls, Greta at the wheel – to try to be happy in other worlds …
The small book is a hymn to the value of diversity and the importance of comparing oneself with others without prejudice; the adventure of the two lovers launches a message of great hope and trust in the future to the younger generations who are growing up in a complex world.
Donaldson – who in the past collaborated with the BBC writing songs for children and who also has texts used in schools to teach students how to pronounce words – prefers a simple writing, made up of rhymes, invented words, imaginative images; and relies on phrases that have within them a rhythm, a cadence and a musicality such as to be suitable to be read aloud (this is also true in the Italian translation by Laura Pelaschiar). Faced with a living language, the illustrator Scheffler, who has worked in the United Kingdom for years, does his part: skilled in rendering the story The Smei and the Smufi also a visual experience for children. The double-page opening table shows a world divided exactly in half: on this side the red people, on the other the blue one; the continuation of the adventure will see mixes of colors become more frequent up to the final double page in which blue and red (with all their shades) coexist, giving life to an unexpected chromatic harmony.
The illustrations remain more impressed than words: who can ever forget the figures that appeared for the first time in the pages of a childhood book? the scholar of fairy tales and myth Marina Werner writes about it in the recently published volume Once upon a time. Little story of the fairy tale (Donzelli, 2021). Let them be George Cruikshank’s illustrations for the tales of Grimm, di Arthur Rackam per Alice by Lewis Carroll or those of Axel Scheffler for the stories of Julia Donaldson.
The virtuous bond between the authors of the texts and illustrators, which characterizes the Albumini series in which they are present giants of writing (such as Gianni Rodari, Roberto Piumini) and masters of drawing (from Altan to Nicoletta Costa, to Francesca Sanna) finds its apex in the professional couple Donaldson-Scheffler.
Next year the two celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of their collaboration started in 1993 with A small house that is too narrow and which had a turning point in 1999 with the release of Il Gruffal (title in the Corriere series with release on January 20), bestseller starring a good monster and a cunning mouse, which has been translated into over eighty languages and has sold over thirteen million copies worldwide. When it comes to successful books, Julia Donaldson holds the distinction of best-selling author in the UK in the decade 2010-2019 (source: Nielsen Bookscan). With more than 27 million copies, it has surpassed another English author for children, David Walliams (up to 18 million) and the American novelist James Patterson (standing at just over 14 million).
Over time the writer Donaldson and the designer Scheffler they became friends but they don’t work together, their professional relationship: thus each maintains autonomy and creative freedom. In 2019, on the occasion of Gruffal’s birthday, Lettura met Donaldson and Scheffler (the article, signed by Pierdomenico Baccalario and appeared in issue # 404 of 25 August, available in the Supplement App in the Archive section). The designer said: Usually Julia sends the story to the editor and the publisher then calls me. And better, because she and I are very good friends so I don’t feel compelled to draw her if for some reason I don’t feel like it. Other jointly signed titles featured in the series are: Stick, The snail and the whale, The witch Rossella.
A praise of tolerance illustrated by Axel Scheffler
The children’s book arrives on Thursday 6 January The Smei and the Smufi by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler. This is the second issue of Albumini, a Corriere della Sera series dedicated to young preschool readers, which combines important Italian and foreign writers and masters of illustration. All titles are available at a price of € 5.90 plus the cost of the newspaper. The series – in which the most popular titles of the historical catalog of Emme Edizioni are collected – is divided into 35 issues on a weekly basis. In the story The Smei and the Smufi it tells of two peoples used to avoiding each other who discover the value of diversity thanks to the courage and passion of two young people in love. The next releases in the Corriere series are history Bears are not afraid by Elizabeth Dale with illustrations by Paula Metcalf (January 13); Il Gruffal (January 20) e The witch Rossella (January 27) both on texts by Donaldson and drawings by Scheffler. Among the authors to report Gianni Rodari, writer of the HC Andersen Award, who after opening the series of releases with the nursery rhyme Everyone’s heaven will come back with other much loved texts such as Giovannino Perdigiorno’s travels e The painter (both combined with illustrations by Valeria Petrone); And The reverse fairy tales paired with Nicoletta Costa. Costa herself, author of cult characters such as Giulio Coniglio and Olga the cloud, proposes a title of which the author of both the texts and the drawings, The vain tree. Other Italian authors in the series are Altan, Pierdomenico Baccalario with Aurora Cacciapuoti, Martina Orsi with Elisa Paganelli, Roberto Piumini with Elena Temporin and, finally, Francesca Sanna.
January 4, 2022 (change January 4, 2022 | 20:30)
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