The Book of Whys

by Gianni Rodari, JooHee Yoon (Illustrator), Antony Shugaar (Translator)

Overview

Factual as well as whimsical, and humorously illustrated, this is the first English-language publication of the 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? Because he wanted to provoke children into thinking about questions, norms, and language itself. 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, and absurdities of our world.

With a fresh translation from Antony Shugaar, who also translated Rodari's Telephone Tales (the 2021 Batchelder Award winner), and playful illustrations in colored pencils from artist JooHee Yoon (Beastly Verse; The Tiger Who Would Be King, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2015; Inside Out and Upside Down), The Book of Whys is a playful, surprising, and poetically informative book for all those who are curious about the world and ready to play with the ways things are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592703647
Publisher:	Enchanted Lion
Publication date:	01/23/2024
Pages:	152
Sales rank:	126,826
Product dimensions:	9.60(w) x 6.40(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	6 - 12 Years

About the Author

The 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.

Editorial Reviews

10/16/2023

Based on columns that Rodari (A Daydreamy Child Takes a Walk) wrote for Italian daily newspaper l’Unità from 1955 to 1958 in which he addressed wide-ranging topics from young readers, this quixotic collection of poems provides comical answers for each query. Evergreen wonderings such as “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” and “Why do your eyes sting when you chop an onion?” prompt playful yet scientific responses rendered in rhyme that paint witty stories infused with vivacious word play. Kindness radiates from a reply regarding the nature of mermaids: “Perhaps I should tell you, cautiously but with/ utter sincerity, that mermaids and sirens/ never really existed.” When asked why one cannot feel Earth’s spin, he responds with a ditty: “There’s a spaceship christened Planet Earth,/ Hurtling through the void, the place of our birth.” In “Why don’t you talk about proverbs anymore?” the author describes them as contradictory and encourages readers to create their own for amusement. The compassionate and educational replies are enhanced by midcentury-modern-style color pencil illustrations by Yoon (Supposing...), who depicts worshipped Egyptian cats, figures of varying skin tones engaging in myriad activities, and whimsy galore, making for a simultaneously thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud work that tackles questions regarding flights of fancy and contemporary existence. Ages 8–12. (Jan.)■

Publishers Weekly

A Children's Book Council January 2023 Hot Off the Press selection!

“This witty, irreverent poetry collection grew out of Rodari's 1950s newspaper-column responses to Italian children who took him up on his offer: ‘Everything has a reason why: just ask me and I'II reply.’” —New York Times

“Rodari (1920-80), his country’s most celebrated 20th-century writer for children, took questions sent in by young readers over the course of several years to l’Unità, the newspaper of the Italian Communist Party. A selection of these entries, smoothly translated by Antony Shugaar and illustrated with zest and humor by JooHee Yoon, appears in The Book of Whys, a beguiling volume suited for sampling rather than for reading straight through… Rodari tackles all these questions with respect for the innocence and curiosity of his unseen interlocutors but without pandering or (mostly) showing his politics… His answers usually had two parts: one chatty and factual, the other jocose and poetic. Addressing the question of why river water is murky, Rodari writes that ‘as rivers descend from mountains, … they load themselves up with mud and debris, which they release into the sea.’ To accompany this very sensible explanation, he offers a ditty about all the famous rivers (the Thames, the Tiber, the Indus and others) meeting in the middle, as it were, and becoming subsumed and anonymous as their waters ‘swirl waves of brine.’” —Wall Street Journal

“A wild amalgamation of poetry, philosophy, science, and stellar art, this is a book just as eclectic, wild, and whimsical as its creator. It’s honestly not like anything out there… The unsung hero of this story is, in fact, translator Antony Shugaar… Shugaar is as good as he is at not simply translating a poem but getting it to rhyme AND be funny in the same way it would be funny in Italian… Shugaar is as adept as maintaining rhyme and meter as he is inserting words like ‘coinkydink’ into a line… Yoon’s art serves as a rather perfect accompaniment… I get the feeling that she’s having fun experimenting. One moment she might be shading hyper-realistic eggs on a page. The next, it’s wordless two page spreads that simply show an older sister and younger brother entering a forest of towering trees… Unabashedly, unapologetically Italian, lacking in any easily-slotted categories, and filled with funny, sometimes brilliant, translations and poems, The Book of Whys is an oddity. In a sea of samey samey children’s books, it sticks out like a sore thumb. That isn’t a criticism… A strangely moving, beautifully illustrated, odd as heck little book.“ —Betsy Bird, A Fuse 8 Production (A School Library Journal blog)

“Translated questions from kids, answered by renowned Italian children’s writer Rodari in his 1950s newspaper columns… His ethos shines through in this work; respect for his child audience mingles with his pro-labor, anti-authoritarian outlook. He often appends mini-parables and rhyming ditties to his answers. Throughout, Rodari excoriates proverbs for their fusty, contradictory didacticism… Rodari provides pithy answers to basic queries about rainbows, light bulbs, and auto engines… His riff on the secret to lifelong happiness is lovely and affirmative: ‘You learn it from life.’ Depicting diverse children and adults, Yoon’s whimsical illustrations further enliven the text. Welcome insights from a celebrated author.” —Kirkus

“Based on columns that Rodari wrote for Italian daily newspaper l’Unità from 1955 to 1958 in which he addressed wide-ranging topics from young readers, this quixotic collection of poems provides comical answers for each query. Evergreen wonderings such as ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ and ‘Why do your eyes sting when you chop an onion?’ prompt playful yet scientific responses rendered in rhyme that paint witty stories infused with vivacious word play. Kindness radiates… The compassionate and educational replies are enhanced by midcentury-modern-style color pencil illustrations by Yoon, who depicts worshipped Egyptian cats, figures of varying skin tones engaging in myriad activities, and whimsy galore, making for a simultaneously thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud work that tackles questions regarding flights of fancy and contemporary existence.” —Publishers Weekly

“He [Rodari] has been compared to Lewis Carroll in regards to his style of using ‘logic and illogic’ to shape his responses. He aimed to help children make sense of their world. Each question and their answers are paired with Yoon’s beautiful illustrations, which are as charmingly eccentric as the answers. They are done in a fantastic colored pencil style, and vary from a small corner or page border to entire spreads.” —School Library Journal

From the Publisher

12/22/2023

Gr 3–5—This is a whimsical offering from Rodari, who answered children's questions through his weekly newspaper column. He gave insightful answers that were part fact, part poem. Children would send in questions such as "Why are grown-ups always right?" or "Why doesn't the moon fall down?" He has been compared to Lewis Carroll in regards to his style of using "logic and illogic" to shape his responses. He aimed to help children make sense of their world. Each question and their answers are paired with Yoon's beautiful illustrations, which are as charmingly eccentric as the answers. They are done in a fantastic colored pencil style, and vary from a small corner or page border to entire spreads. An artist's note describes how Rodari's work inspired this new art. The book includes an introduction to Rodari written by the translator, an artist's note, and a table of contents, which is a list of every question sent in by a child. Overall, this book might be a little hard to place in a nonfiction collection. It's part poetry, part factual. But it might work well in a picture book collection for older readers. VERDICT A decent purchase for libraries.—Kristin J. Anderson

School Library Journal

2023-10-07
Translated questions from kids, answered by renowned Italian children’s writer Rodari in his 1950s newspaper columns.

Rodari, who grew up during Mussolini’s reign, briefly joined the Fascists to obtain work but actively resisted the regime. His ethos shines through in this work; respect for his child audience mingles with his pro-labor, anti-authoritarian outlook. He often appends mini-parables and rhyming ditties to his answers. Throughout, Rodari excoriates proverbs for their fusty, contradictory didacticism. Responding to “Why do we have to study?” he notes that learning helps students make the world “a better and more beautiful place”—yet he urges children to seek lessons beyond books, in firsthand experiences. His brilliant riposte to why gold is so precious locates its answer in the human labor expended to extract it. He then skewers the proverb “Silence is golden,” avowing that if “it’s the right time to express your point of view, then silence isn’t even worth as much as…sawdust.” Rodari provides pithy answers to basic queries about rainbows, light bulbs, and auto engines. There are koanlike nuggets for some “whys,” from “Why are kings kings?” (“because they say so”) to “Why does it rain? (“because of the sun”) to “Why do we all wish for things?” (“wishing…amounts to living”). His riff on the secret to lifelong happiness is lovely and affirmative: “You learn it from life.” Depicting diverse children and adults, Yoon’s whimsical illustrations further enliven the text.

Welcome insights from a celebrated author. (introduction from Shugaar, artist’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-12)

Kirkus Reviews