2023-11-29 22:05:08
by PIERDOMENIC BACCALARIO
Sunday 3 December on newsstands with Reading, the supplement dedicated to the little ones and their parents, teachers and educators. Advice, tales and stories. Theme: letters
Winter is coming and our beloved Reading for girls and boys is coming, themed on letters, letters, postcards and greeting cards. Raise your hand if you have never written or imagined writing to Santa Claus, or to Baby Jesus, with the hope of having your wishes granted? Here it is: in this issue, previewed on the insert App on Saturday 2nd December and on newsstands on Sunday 3rd, we will tell you everything you need to know, the history, the charm and the mystery of these correspondences, thanks to the best Italian pens of the sector, or rather to the authors whose books you will already find on the shelves of bookshops, ready to be given as gifts.
We start with a large double-page poster on the history of postal communications, created by the indestructible comedian Mozzillo/Panizza, and then go directly to the official post office in Rovaniemi, Finland, where one of our correspondents, Alessandra Chiarlo, went to sift through the thousands of letters received and cataloged every year by its stainless officials.
You may already know that Santa Claus is aesthetically an invention of Coca Cola, but the article that talks about him is full of surprises, as is the one that reviews all the other guardian deities of the good behavior of children in other religions of the world: Who commands the various traditions? And Saint Lucia, and the Befana, to name two, what role do they have in all this trying to seem better than the good?
Then there is a famous writer, Professor Tolkien, who for more than twenty years took the trouble to do the opposite operation, that is, to write himself, and to illustrate, the letters that Santa Claus wrote to his children, with lots of of battles and wars against mischievous goblins and particularly clumsy white bears. And there are three thrilling letters, which three prisoners write to themselves as children, to give each other good advice on the life they will have to face: they arrived thanks to the teachers of Cpia 1 (Provincial Center for Adult Education) in Bari, headquarters prison, and at the Francesco Rucci prison in the same city, within a program of meetings and writing with a series of children’s authors, about whom the author and director Marco Ponti speaks to us with emotion.
But how long does it take to deliver a letter and how do postmen work? And is there still anyone who produces postcards? And who buys them? To send them to whom? A century ago an artistic movement linked to letters and postcards spread, and Professor Laura Scuriatti, from Bard College in Berlin, tells us about it, and about some epistolary treasures, such as those that the Bolaffi Auction House deals with every day, which opened its archives for the occasion: eighteenth-century Christmas cards, formidable collectors and those magical, precious, stamps. Which were even used to ship real people from Mexico to the United States, Christian Antonini tells us immediately afterwards.
For all undecided children, and for their parents, whether they are parent 1 or parent 2, it doesn’t matter, when it comes to asking for or giving a good gift, we have prepared the double central page of the Counterpacco, quoting, with a little Christmas lightness, Dante’s retaliation, and asking the bookseller Chiara Mozzone which was the right book to reward every different malicious child.
Then there are our rankings by the bookstores in the sector, the words from the children’s dictionary collected by Andrea Tullio Canobbio, the letters that changed history because they were or were not sent at the right time, and there are crucial letters in novels that told us about them. There are letters in cinema and in the art world. And the issue ends with five sensational stories: a wonderful love letter by Daniele Aristarco, a deadly exchange of messages on WhatsApp by Giuditta Campello, an encrypted letter by the Machiavellian Christian Hill, an anonymous letter (but by investigating carefully perhaps you can understand who writes it) prepared by Barbara Fiorio and a shocking letter from the future, sent to us by an artificial intelligence thanks to Marco Magnone.
It ends on a high note with the New Year’s horoscope of the Magician Chaltrus. But be careful, because it seems that his deadly advice has passed through the sagacious pen of that scoundrel Alessandro Gatti, Ithaca, United States.
The new number
Reading for girls and boys is the insert that Reading has designed for the little ones and for their parents, grandparents, educators, teachers and for anyone who accompanies them in the great sea of books and reading. Created in collaboration with Book on a Tree by Pierdomenico Baccalario, the Letturina is released periodically: the new issue will be previewed in the insert App on Saturday 2 December and on newsstands on Sunday 3.
November 29, 2023 (modified November 29, 2023 | 9:03 pm)
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