Ecological Issues in Works by Giana Anguissola and Gianni Rodari

The aim of this paper is to examine ecological issues in Italian children’s literature by focusing on the works of two Italian writers who criticize, from different perspectives, the lack of ecological awareness in modern humans. The writers are Giana Anguissola (1906–1966), loved by the young female readership of the day for her vividly ironic style and rounded female characters, and Gianni Rodari (1920–1980), effectively combining realism and fantasy to encourage his readers’ critical thinking. Anguissola’s Le straordinarie vacanze di Violetta (1964) places the protagonists of her prior Milan-set Violetta la timida in the new setting of the Piacenza countryside, where charismatic Don Piero has revived ancient farming practices: the local farmers do not use chemical fertilizers, machines or herbicides, and they transport their produce to the town by carts. Rodari explicitly addresses ecological themes in some of his articles and in two stories: “Il pifferaio e le automobili” (Tante storie per giocare, 1971) and “Il mondo in scatola” (Novelle fatte macchina, 1973). In the former tale, the narrative unfolds in a city completely overrun by cars, and in the latter, a surreal plot revolves around the problem of waste.

Wasted World or Sporco Mondo: Translating Informational Books for Children on Environmental Issues

The paper focuses on the Italian translations of two English informational books for children: Wasted World (2009) and Kids Fight Climate Change (2020), which deal with environmental issues. Informational books texts result from a complex dissemination process aimed at making specialised knowledge comprehensible to young readers. To achieve this purpose, informational books rely on various discursive popularising strategies, such as an array of explanations, and various methods for eliciting readers’ engagement, such as questions and irony. Indeed, they are part of what has come to be known as “edutainment,” in which education and entertainment are intertwined to create a “hybrid genre” (Buckingham and Scanlon, 2005). As the texts examined in the paper engage with ecology and environmental issues, they have a dual purpose: to inform and to raise awareness (ecoliteracy). Despite the importance of popularising texts, the translation of such products is still an underexplored field of research. The comparative analysis of the two English texts and their respective Italian translations centres on how global warming and climate change are described in the source and target texts. It examines how the popularising strategies are translated, given their importance in knowledge dissemination for children. The findings indicate that Italian translations, though retaining the combination of education and entertainment, tend to be more precise and more complex than the source texts. This is in line with the intercultural differences identified between Low Context (LC) cultures and High Context (HC) cultures.

The Popularisation of Knowledge about Nature and Ecology: The Nasza Księgarnia Publishing House and Its Publications

The article presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the repertoire of Nasza Księgarnia, a more than 100-year-old Polish publishing house specialising in children’s and youngadult literature, in terms of informational books on nature and ecology. The study covers the years 2011–2021, as a clear increase in the number of such publications was observable all over the world in this period. The main trends in the development of informational books published by Nasza Księgarnia, their dominant themes, and their prevalent genres are identified. Two books on endangered and threatened species are qualitatively analysed by means of Nina Goga’s method as illustrative of the releases and trends under study.