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...

Hello, I am here! It's been wow, half a year that I didn't show up here. Dear readers, are you still there?  I didn't write this long for some health and other personal reasons but it doesn't mean I stopped reading books with my son.  We are still in Japan. In the past months here I discovered and rediscovered many beautiful Japanese children's literature and foreign books translated in Japanese. These are just a few of many I got. We will take them all with us when we eventually return to Italy. My son turned 16 months and lately started to understand many things we say to him although he still speaks few words that make sense.  The way he reacts to books changed a lot, too. Now he picks his favourite books from the bookshelf and comes on my lap, asking me to read them aloud.  One of the most frequently picked ones are these two. One is "Who Ate It?" by Taro Gomi. As I read it, he points on the pictures to respond to my question, "who ate it?"  ...

Flowers are blooming and birds are singing. It’s spring everywhere but it’s still pandemic. How I wish we could go on a picnic to the beautiful parks or on the hillsides. Lately, Bologna was re-designated as the “orange zone” but we are not yet allowed to gather with wines and panini in public areas. But hey, I had a book that brings me picnic vibes. It’s one of the series of this iconic children’s literature born in Japan in the 60s and now translated in many languages. The protagonists are little twin mice, Guri, always dressed in blue, and Gura, dressed in red, respectively (that’s how we recognize which one is who!). In this book, they go on a picnic with tons of food they had prepared for lunch. I love this book. For example, it makes me giggle that they set the alarm at twelve for lunch, and when Guri says “now it should be lunch time already,” the clock still ticks ten. To wait another two hours they start jogging and then go into a little adventure in the woods. As I proceed th...