Celebrating John Anthony Ciardi

Please join us for an evening dedicated to the Italian translation of John Ciardi’s The Reason for the Pelican, Il perchè del pellicano, translated by Annalisa Macchia and with an introduction by Luigi Fontanella.

These “fables in verse” were written some seventy years ago by John Anthony Ciardi. This poetry is of a fairy-tale-didactic tone and still retain, intact, the surprising charm of the author’s linguistic mastery as well as his fruitful interest in the imaginative world of children. It was this very successful little book (no fewer than seven editions within four years), accompanied by Madeleine Gekiere’s tasteful illustrations, that constituted Ciardi’s first collection of children’s books. The Reason for the Pelican was followed by several other collections that had great circulation throughout North America.

“This is a juicy first for Italian audiences, a real gem for creative imagination and love of language with which to play together with children. Particular animals appear in it: first and foremost, the pelican (with its long and fantastic beak that is certainly neither a spoon for eating soup nor a spare shoe); dragons, giant mollusks, owls, seals and walruses quacking among themselves; and again—fireflies, pythons, polar bears, herons, lions, and even fantastic animals born of Ciardi’s inexhaustible linguistic imagination. Therein lies the fascination of these little fairy-tales-in-verse, which constitute on the one hand a mental stimulus, for children and grandchildren (but also for us adults), to broaden their imaginative capacity, and on the other hand, pedagogically, a start to a better knowledge of language. Because only an effective and rich knowledge of language can make us—children and adults—better understand, and thus improve, the reality in which we live and in which those who will come after us shall live.” —Luigi Fontanella