Country Songs About Beach

" Animal Stories "(2008) The discovery of slowness

Non avrei never thought it would happen, but I wrote a book for children.

In fact, it all started almost ten years ago. I finished translating a book for The Beaver on the processing of "Psycho" Alfred Hitchcock , published in Italy in the wake of the output remake by Gus Van Sant (entitled, without the small provincial censuretta was touched at the time the Sir Alfred's masterpiece, "Psycho") and I had found in a couple of macabre rhyme that I had fun making, in Italian, trying to reinvent the rhymes, to maintain, rather than the literal concept, playfulness. There was a nice limerick, for example, written by an unknown author in 1957:

Un certo Ed, bizzarro giovanetto,
una ragazza non la portava a letto:
se gli pungea vaghezza
ne tagliava via mezza
e conservava il resto in un cassetto.

Ma c'erano anche filastrocche più articolate e narrative come questa:

La vigilia di Natale
tutto tace nella scuola
vuote e buie son le scale
né una mosca più ci vola.
Gli insegnanti sono appesi
per benino dal soffitto:
Eddie e Gus, da loro attesi,
si avvicinano al convitto.

A quanto pare, queste piccole traduzioni piacquero abbastanza da suggerire al Castoro che potevo essere la persona adatta a tradurre in italiano una divertente serie inglese di libri per bambini. Nacquero così sei librini tutti in rima: Storia di ragno, Storia di plancton, Storia di lumacone, Storia di gatto, Storia di cane e Storia di pipistrello . Libricini coloratissimi e paradossali, in cui la personalità di alcuni animali veniva raccontata con un umorismo spesso davvero surreale e quasi sempre (almeno per me) irresistibile.

Poi gli anni sono passati, io ho continuato a occuparmi soprattutto di cinema - per il Castoro e per altri editori - fino all'estate scorsa, quando Renata Gorgani mi ha fatto vedere un libro francese che aveva deciso di acquistare. Era una raccolta di bellissimi disegni di animali di vario genere, only that the texts were very modest - written, probably with his left hand by a French writer who, I suspect, thought he had better things to do. The proposal was to just throw down some alternative short story ... a bit 'thicker pair of lines of micragnoso bestowed from the original, but less content in a folder, and dedicated to telling how the animal that had received one of its most typical characteristics. But the times were very close so I was encouraged to draw "inspiration" from folk tales and traditional, classical or even out rights.

Two of the stories (the one on the toucan, and zebra) had already been written and should serve as a model. Because of the I had to portray the animals were leopard, the rhinoceros el ' elephant, for starters, I turned to Kipling and his "Just So Stories " that as a child I was fascinated. The first three stories are, therefore, admittedly, an adaptation of his brilliant inventions - and I was surprised to find that I needed to come back: I was still a memory vividissimo despite the book not to read it at least thirty years.


Only after adjusting in the three short stories that I remembered I realized that if I had to start looking, reading, and choose to rewrite dozens of stories of animals I would not have never be able to deliver on time. It was the first to invent from scratch, looking - as it was in my ability - to follow in the footsteps of Kipling. Not knowing if the stories were working, I tried to tell my nephew to six years. I was surprised when, telling him to break the ice history of the elephant (one of those adapted from "Just So Stories , actually) has quickly jumped up, saying," This I know! " It's not that I had boasted that it was my bag of flour, but managed to make me feel caught in the act - so I carefully avoided to tell the other not original and I shot all those who had invented just me.

It seemed very interested. Not only when, a couple of months later, I told him that the book was about to leave, he immediately jumped up and said, "Ah, those stories in which" ... and began to stone the plots that I had told him - remembering the details that I myself had already completely forgotten. Of course, it only proves that my head is more rusty than that of my nephew, but I prefer to think that the stories are liked.

The link for Ibs: http://www.ibs.it/code/9788880334682/hess-paul/storie-animali.html
A link to the website of the Beaver: http://www.castoro-on -line.it/libri/schedadellibro.aspx? IDCollana = 2 & id = 544
Anobii The link of the book: http://www.anobii.com/books/Storie_di_animali/9788880334682/01703c43d2343fa941/

Added December 9, 2008: I find that the book Psycho was recently republished with a new cover is a bit 'prettier the previous one. Here it is. In the meantime, I am pleased to be able to bully the fact that most books free, fair Roman small publishers that ended yesterday at the Palazzo dei Congressi, Stories animal is sold out!