Gianni Rodari at Lucca Changes 100 Gianni Rodari in Lucca

To mark the centenary of the fabulous Gianni Rodari, Lucca Comics & Games – Changes edition, in collaboration with Electa and Einaudi Ragazzi has organised numerous events to be held between 30 October and 1 November and which can be followed live streamed online.       

Shows, debates, workshops and readings will be attended by some of the leading Rodari scholars together with celebrities from the world of culture, publishing and entertainment, for three days completely devoted to the great master from Omegna. 

First part of the Training Course for teachers and educators to fully understand the work of Gianni Rodari, one of the most important children's authors of the 20th century, and acquire the tools to apply them in the class/group context with educational reflections/teaching methods developed over the years by the animators of the Parco della Fantasia. With Pino Boero, a teacher of children's literature and teaching of reading among the greatest Rodari experts, and Walter Fochesato, one of the leading experts in children's literature and the history of illustration and editorial coordinator of the monthly “Andersen”.    

The idea of a possible fantastic, to be fixed and studied in its main rules, has many founders and as many followers. Novalis wrote about this in his letters, Gianni Rodari recovered it in the apparatus of the presentation of the Grammar of Fantasy, Gianno Guadalupi and Alfredo Manguel cite it in their Handbook of Imaginary Places, J.R.R. Tolkien dreamed of it in his valedictory address at the University of Oxford, after spending thirty-four years (uncomfortably) occupying the chair of English. Hence it is an uncertain and uncomfortable subject, like fairy tales or homework, so much so that it is often confined to fiction for children, genre fiction or activities that teachers can do with their classes thanks to the Rodarica project, which has put down roots in the various branches of the fantastic. How to do it and how not to do it, its necessity or illusion, are discussed, from various angles and with unpredictable digressions by four authors* who have inhabited and hope to remain for a long time in the various rooms of this imaginary building without doors (if not those of time). In predictable alphabetical order: Pier Domenico Baccalario (the moderator, who actually wastes time), Manlio Castagna (surrounded by his disquieting evil shadows), Davide Morosinotto (accompanied by the orient of La PIù Grande) and Giada Pavesi, one of the most promising Italian authors, who will pull the rug out from under the other three.

A workshop for playing with words, open to all attendees and in honour of Gianni Rodari. We will be inventing stories, poems, characters and consequences! With Andrea Angiolino, journalist, game-designer and playful populariser and Beniamino Sidoti, journalist and author and one of the founders of Lucca Games.  

The second part of the training course consists of practical exercises, by Alberto Poletti and the animators of the Parco della Fantasia in Omegna. The participants will be divided into three groups that will engage in three workshops dedicated respectively to Gianni the Master, Gianni the Writer and Gianni the Journalist. 

A stone thrown into a pond sets up concentric ripples that spread across its surface, moving the water lily and the reed, the paper boat and the fisherman's float at different distances and with different effects... In the same way a word, cast into the mind at random, produces ripples on the surface and a deeper stir, setting off an endless series of chain reactions, involving in its fall sounds and images, analogies and memories, meanings and dreams. These are powerful words by Gianni Rodari, words that enable us to understand the profound meaning of the Grammar of Fantasy: not an instruction manual but a series of impulses, which, like pebbles thrown into the pond, generate opportunities for reflection in the processes that guide the fantasy. And it is by starting from four contributions by the educationist Federico Batini, the illustrator Alessandro Sanna, the actor Giulio Scarpati and the very young bookblogger Null that we will be talking about it with Pino Boero, Vanessa Roghi, Gaia Stock and Luca Boschi.    

Matita HB is the pseudonym of a little girl with a passion for writing, with a very lively imagination, who lives in many parallel worlds. It is no mystery that this completely new character (the heroine of the series of the same name, written by Susanna Mattiangeli and illustrated by Rita Petruccioli for Editrice Il Castoro) came into being thanks to that repertoire of ideas that Rodari has made available to everyone. It is again the image of the stone in the pond: a divergent, centrifugal movement, which can reach places remote from the starting point. In Matita HB’s notebook episodes of her everyday life are turned into various forms of storytelling: there is a page from her diary, a letter, a fantastic tale, an action story, a poem, a commentary, a page from a newspaper. Through the stories of her superheroine Powercat, Matita also discovers the language of comics, becoming an impassioned reader of them. In this encounter for teachers and educators, we will retrace the creation of a Powercat comic. By entering the mechanisms of comic communication we will come to talk about books and reading at school.

Dodò wants at all costs to make a journey into space, but without an intergalactic rocket it's not easy! Luckily Laura and Andrea always find a way to please their puppy! With the help of a beautiful nursery rhyme by Gianni Rodari  “Il treno dell'avvenire”  (The Train of the Future) and a fair dose of imagination, our friends will have a very amusing adventure in space... And they won’t be alone. All the children in the audience will travel with them! With the cast of L'Albero Azzurro: Dodò, Laura Carusino, Andrea Beltramo, Paolo Carenzo, Mario Sebastiano di Bella.

Ascanio Celestini brings to the stage "La Freccia Azzurra", a tale by Gianni Rodari published for the first time in 1954 with the title “Il viaggio della Freccia Azzurra” and republished with the definitive title in a new edition ten years later. Set in Orbetello, it tells of a rather stingy and sour old hag, almost a baroness, who gives gifts only to those who can afford them, and of a child, Francesco, forced to work by poverty, and a series of toys that come to life and have real feelings.