(An unexpected story)

"A girl with a basket, a walk in the woods, a swindling wolf, a double snack, an open belly, a big celebration. We all know the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. But Munari – who knew a lot about original Riding Hoods and about books you touch – said that “knowledge is always a surprise” Una storia imprevedibile puts this valuable lesson in practice, taking us through the tale in a completely new manner. It does so thanks to a playfully surprising narrative mechanism: in every passage – that we think we know so well – we find one or more alternative possibilities, and the invitation that the reader will do the same, playing “What if…?”.

The shapes are simple, well-studied and evocative: the girl with the red hood can thus become an ice cream cone, the grand-mother’s nightcap can become a jellyfish, a cookie can become a clockwork gear, and so on, so that a single narration ends up becoming a multiple story, and, in fact, quite unexpected.
An ingenious system of holes allows only selected parts of the underlying illustration to be visible, masking or adding new details. The tactile figures have a new meaning on every page, stimulating the reader to indulge in letting the imagination run wild and making new conjectures without limiting the usability of the page.
The book thus achieves an interesting and intelligent mission: it enhances the fact that a single shape can result in many different interpretations, transforming this aspect from a potential problem to the prime mover of the story.

And there’s more: the well accomplished relation between the narrative construction and the design is a true breath of fresh air in the landscape of the accessible publishing industry for children, where usually familiarity and neutrality are preferred, instead of the pleasure of making assumptions, guessing, getting it wrong, thinking again.
Instead, here, the amazement is cared for and at the forefront of the reading process, giving to the visually impaired child the same right to a stimulating, surprising, and non-trivial reading.”

Elena Corniglia graduated in Italian Literature, Philology and Linguistics and specialized in Children’s Literature. She is the head of Vietato Non Sfogliare, center for the research on accessible books for children, part of the association Area onlus di Torino. Since 2013 she has been collaborating with LiBeR, a magazine on children’s books, writing articles about the relation between disabilities and children’s literature.

"What amazing graphics, and how inventive!”

"It is magnificently made. I love the different textures."