RODARI AND CIPOLLINO, HEROES OF A REVOLUTION

Abstract

This article presents a very brief biographical review of the Italian author Gianni Rodari’s youth. Emphasis is placed on the data that shaped his work as a writer for children and guided his political interests: his life during the two decades of fascism in Italy; his membership in the Italian Communist Party; his work as a journalist and head of publications and associations; and, finally, the facts that made him write for children. Thus, the biographical circumstances that shaped him as a person, and those that influenced his thought and his professional choices have been considered. Finally, his first work Il romanzo di Cipollino ‘The novel of Cipollino’ (1951), is briefly shown as a summary of Rodari’s possible political and social vision in this first period of his professional life.