Spring is definitely my favourite season. It's been sunny almost every day over the weeks here and my son enjoys playing outside a lot. Our eyes have been pleased by spring blooms in pink, yellow, white, and now in violet of wisterias and hyacinths in our garden.  In the lovely afternoons, I purposely take him for a walk so that he falls asleep on the stroller. If I succeed, I have a bit of me-time in this garden for one hour, more or less. So, I am writing this article in the sunny spring garden, hoping to finish it up before he wakes up, and remembered that I wanted to show you this Italian picture book titled NEL GIARDINO (IN THE GARDEN). We found this book during the past winter in the city library. He immediately loved it so much that he started to read it in the park on our way home. Does the image he is looking at reminds you of something? For me it looked like one of the paper-cutting artworks by Henri Matisse, or simply a pair of leaves or seaweeds in different colours. Th

As the old Japanese saying goes, "February runs away," and the eventful March is coming in two days. Back in my home country, it is time for peach blossoms also admired on the occasion of the girl's festival, the third of March. I wish we had those delicate pink blossoms in our garden. But instead, we have pretty yellow flowers of mimosa started to open in time for the International Women's Day. Spring is just around the corner. I said "eventful March" not only for my personal matters but also for my city, Bologna. In one week, the 60th edition of Bologna Children's Book Fair will be hosted here. This annual event, as a book fair exclusively dedicated to the market of children's literature, is the word's largest. Although the fair itself is a business-to-business event, there will also be various art, book, and educational side-events in town on this occasion.    It was back in 2019 that I attended the fair for the first time as part of my resear

Another winter vacation has passed and we are back to the ordinary days. I hope my readers have had a nice holiday season. I had a relatively peaceful holiday mostly spent just with my son and my husband. For the Christmas we skipped the family gathering and went to South Tyrol. My two-year-old son was super excited to see a bonfire for the first time on the Christmas Eve, when as an Italian tradition the owner of our hotel was burning things that were old.  He was dancing around the big fire and it was quite a primitive scene. The following days he enjoyed excursions in the mountain; walking on a frozen lake, running up and down the hills covered with snow, and seeing 360 degree panoramic view of  the Dolomites.  Having returned from the vacation, his Roman cousins joined us for a few days in Bologna. For the parents it was a bit like being in a jungle to have three boys in the house, but was certainly a great time for my son. They are older than him and always open him up to somethin

Six days to Christmas, are you getting ready for the holiday weeks?  Here in Bologna it already snowed once earlier in December. My son still plays outside but much less. All the more days to stay inside and to read books! Last month, our Japanese children's book collection was greatly expanded. Thanks to a new Japanese friend of mine whom I met at the book reading session in the city's library I previously talked about , we were invited to a semi-closed Japanese children's book fair held at the Far-Eastern Art Study Centre of Bologna. Allegedly, it was a rare occasion that the centre was giving away some of their children's literature collections at a bargain price as their library was getting overloaded by books annually donated by Japanese publishers come to the Bologna Children's Book Fair. It was really a cold and cloudy day and I had no way of leaving my son with anyone but taking him with me on the twenty minute bike ride to get there, but I did it, and glad

Autumn is perhaps the best time for kids to have fun in the nature. My son enjoys walking on the fallen leaves, finding acorns and chestnuts in the woods. So the heroine of this book is. This Japanese book I found in my favourite library in Bologna features a story of this girl enjoys walking in the autumn nature. She finds fallen leaves, acorns, bagworms, dragonflies and imitates their movement, as if to dance with them.  The joy of reading this book aloud together with my son is perhaps attributed to the many Japanese onomatopoeias to be found throughout the book. For example, to describe the sound she makes when walking on the ground covered with autumn leaves,  we read, "kasa kasa kasa,"  and if fallen leaves are turning around slowly in the air, we say,  "kuru, kuru, kururi ." How about in your language? I also love the warm watercolour tones of the illustration by Michiko Egashira, the author. At the end of the story, after her father joins her walk, she finds

Hi there. I am writing this post from Bologna, Italy where we moved back from Japan in the mid-summer.  It has been a great year for my son to get to know his Japanese grandparents, family, and friends he made there.  He is shortly turning two years old, and is more attracted than ever to words. So we have much more fun reading books together.  Every page of the books is filled with images that make him a curious boy. He can't help pointing at them and saying "Oh? Ah?" as if to ask "What's this?" In the beginning,  he was just doing this with illustrations, but now he also recognizes letters (both Japanese and English/Italian alphabets) and numbers, asking me how to pronounce them. And guess what, if I were perhaps half asleep and would answer him with the same words to different images, he would immediately raises his voice and says "Ah! Ah!" to warn me.  Do you remember this Miffy's picture book I previously talked about ? He still loves it a