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...

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 ...

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?"  ...

In my last post, I wrote that I would like to look for more books for babies. A few days later, I received a thoughtful gift for my son from a friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen for half a year. It was this cute sensory book printed in black, white and a touch of yellow only. What a nice choice! She wasn’t reading my blog, but she knew what I was looking for! On the cover, it was written that “stimoli visivi in bianco e nero (visual stimuli in black and white).” I was curious why, especially because I’d remember reading an article that vivid colours would usually be used for toys and books for toddlers. This is because it takes several months for new-borns to start recognizing different colours, and pastel colours are the last to be recognized.   However, I discovered that this book was actually suitable for new-borns who still don’t even see colours. According to another article I found today, illustrations in black and white have high contrast and thus can be recognized by ne...

Today, May 5th, we celebrate the annual boys' festival (traditionally it was, but lately it's known as the children's day) in Japan. In short, it’s a day to appreciate and pray for your little one’s sound growth and happiness to come.  This morning, I made these origami kabuto (helmet for Japanese warriors) , irises, and carp, to celebrate our son's first festival of the Japanese tradition. They are iconic items for this day in my homeland. It’s incredible how every single day makes a difference to a baby. Say, how much he speaks and squeaks now compared to just a week ago. I don’t remember exactly since when, but it’s been at least for a couple of weeks that my son started babbling something almost sounds like words. Da da, aba ba, ubbbb, cha, ta… It's irresistibly cute. His “vocabulary” increases each week, in proportion to the variation of his body movements. By the time he turned four months old, he’d already learned how to turn his body to his left (always left...

I am excited about launching my very first personal blog to write about my lifelong passion: children's books with beautiful narratives and illustrations. They are works of art which open you, even grown-ups,  up to something you might not know or be aware of before. For this, I believe books can be one of the best gifts to give. Last week, I accompanied my husband to a little bookstore in our town to look for something to bring to our friend for his son's first birthday. Then, we both fell in love with this book about the moon and a little girl by Gianni Rodari, an Italian journalist, educator, and author of children's literature awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1970.  The book was so beautiful that we ended up getting two copies; one for the birthday boy and the other for our son who was turning four months old on the day his fellow friend was celebrating his first birthday. A friend of mine once told me she would always buy her daughters books targeting a lit...