The Dignitaries of Destiny get together to decide a birth: a new life will be soon assigned to a woman who wish to be a mother. But the decision is taking too much time, and the person who's going to be born decides to ask whether to choose his destiny. So they bring him to that special place called the Yellow Room, where silence can let him be carried by his thoughts, and where a town, a house, a room and a cradle suddenly appear... Here begins the exciting adventure of his birth, full of hopes and expectations, but also of unexpected events that run the risk to prejudice the Call to Life. But finally the miracle is made and what he has just imagined becomes true... From the synergy between Miguel Angel Mendo's words and Chen Zhen's images, a tender and fun fable telling children the mistery of birth through a simple and poetic language, that goes with the colours and shapes of Art.

Chen Zhen (Shangai, 1955 - Paris, 2000). His artistic style had as its basis the encounter between Western and Chinese culture. The artist drew from Taoism, as well as Buddhist religion and philosophy, re-elaborating their meanings, and using them to represent an alternative to the negative influence exercised by the consumer society. The artistic value of his sculptures and installations lies in his constant striving for harmony between body and spirit, which leads to the enriching of one’s inner life.

Miguel Angel Mendo was born in Madrid in 1949. A graduate in psychology, he began working as a psychotherapist in close contact with the world of children and alternative pedagogy. He has written books for children, but also for the theatre, and in the past has been a teacher of cinema, a contributor to various periodicals and an editor for television and radio programmes. The following have been translated into Italian by Edizioni Piemme Junior: Per un maledetto spot which won the Lazarillo Award in 1989, one of Spain's most prestigious prizes for books for the young, and also Un museo sinistro e Che i morti stiano zitti!

A fairy tale for everyone, adults and children, a book that holds the words of a great author, Paola Mastrocola, and the work of the famous artist, Marisa Merz, the only woman to be a leading protagonist of the Arte Povera movement. This story of a strange little girl in a land inhabited by benevolent or terrible figures marks the rhythm of the pas-à-deux between the writer and the famous artist, who did not live to see the publication of this volume that she would have liked so much. This fable, which accompanies a new season in the series and for the publishing house, is both her legacy and our tribute to one of the most interesting and free women on the international art scene.

Paola Mastrocola was born in Turin and taught literature in a scientific high school. Until 1998 she devoted herself to theatre, poetry and literary research. In 2000 she made her debut in fiction, later publishing a large number of novels.

Marisa Merz, born in Turin in 1926 and deceased in 2019, was a famous international artist. Her work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions and is included in the collections of some of the most important international museums dedicated to contemporary art.

This art fairytale dedicated to the imagery and world of the Italian Transavanguardia movement starts with a real narrative between an adult man and a little girl, a book made up of dialogues, questions and answers between Beatrice and Giorgio. In the story, the five protagonists of the movement theorised by Achille Bonito Oliva enter with the vibrant colours and shapes of their works, providing a pretext for a conversation between generations, triggering elements of new stories, interpretations and exercises of freedom.

Giorgio Guglielmino, born in Genoa in 1957, is an art writer and collector.

Beatrice Carpani, born in 1988, a girl at the time of the book’s publication, was living in Buenos Aires with her family.

“Night. Not a single star in the sky…" In the darkness and silence of a city of tall, blackened buildings, Evelina dreams of opening a thousand-star hotel, the most luxurious and brightest ever built. And in her dream, Evelina imagines colourful and wonderful rooms. The meeting of Dario Voltolini’s words with Nicola De Maria’s pictorial language gives birth to a marvellous dream that exhorts to life so that “... we know that anger is also needed to give a beautiful colour to a world that otherwise dies”.

Thanks to the synergy between the art of writing and the art of images, La favola dell’arte offers children a fabulous way to enter the world of contemporary art, a useful means of entertainment and knowledge at the same time.

Nicola De Maria was born in Foglianise in 1954. “Since the mid-1970s the artist has been experimenting with an original language in which abstraction is charged with poetic figurative allusions, archetypal expressions of nature, joy and passion. His painting thrives on simple forms and pure colours”. (Achille Bonito Oliva)

Dario Voltolini was born in Turin in 1959. He has published Una intuizione metropolitana (Bollati Boringhieri, 1990), Rincorse (Einaudi, 1994), Forme d’onda (Feltrinelli, 1996), 10 (Feltrinelli, 2000), Primaverile (Feltrinelli, 2001), I confini di Torino (Quiritta, 2003) and Il tempo della luce (Effigie, 2005). With Giulio Mozzi he has published Sotto i cieli d’Italia (Sironi, 2004) and with Antonio Moresco he edited the collective volume Scrivere sul fronte occidentale (Feltrinelli, 2002). He also works as a librettist with composer Nicola Campogrande.

“One looked like a dinosaur. Another one looked like a anteater. Another one a big lizard or a crocodile. They are not just figures or signes among the stars. They are living creatures that move up in the sky – I said – the Universe is full of dinosaurs, kites, lizards and lions, men with arrows and rhinos”.
Have you ever looked at the sky discovering stars and constellations in courious shapes and wondering maybe someone else is doing the same on the other side?
From the synergy between Marosia Castaldi’s words and Mario Merz’s images, a tender fable telling about a world made of imagination that is inside everyone, told through a swift language that goes with the colours and shapes of Art.

La favola dell’arte, or a fabulous way of entering the world of art. The art of writing and the art of the figure in a close synergy at the service of fun and learning.

Mario Merz (Milan 1925-2003) was one of the leading exponents of Arte Povera. His works have been shown in permanent collections of the most important and prestigious museums all over the world: from Guggenheim in New York to the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Los Angeles, from Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam to Nationalgalerie in Berlin, from Israel Museum in Jerusalem to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He received the Japanese Imperial Praemium for sculpture on November 2003.

Marosia Castaldi born in Naples, lives in Milan. She has studied philosophy and art. It’s ages since she dedicates herself completely to writing. She has published narrative texts, Abbastanza prossimo (Tam Tam 1986, finalist at mondello Prize 1986), Casa idiota (Tringale 1990), Piccoli paesaggi (Anterem 1993) and novels, La Montagna (Campanotto 1991), Ritratto di Dora (Loggia dè Lanzi 1994, finalist at Palazzo al Bosco Prize 1992), Fermata km 501 (Tranchida 1997), Per quante vite (Feltrinelli 1999, finalist at Premio Bergamo 2000 and at Premio Chianti 2000).

If Michelangelo blocks of marble already contained I Prigioni that the sculptor later digged out, the materials protagonists of Storie di pietra e d’altro (Tales of stone and more) had already inside them the artworks that the man will take out and the tale that will make of him an artist. The young readers of Tales of stones and more find out materials as the artists of our century have already done - Anselmo, Penone, Pistoletto, Merz, Kounellis - who bring to the extreme limit the sensitivity that makes them catch "the artistic "inside the substance and inside the shape, before the human agency. In Quarzo microcosmos, so close to the children's one, stones can think, but their thinking is not as fast as their becoming sand; growing trees destroy the skyscrapers' order; clothes thrown in the room becomes a rainbow; and all the tales connect one thing to the other as in a kind of an illustrated Mille e una notte of art materials.

Guido Quarzo, born in Torino 1948, winner of the Andersen Baia delle Favole Prize in 1995 as best author, is primary school teacher and wrote nursery rhymes, novels, tales for children among which Seconda storia del Principe Faccia da Maiale, L'ultimo lupo mannaro in città, Comefuché, Il viaggio dell'Orca Zoppa, Sogno disegno matita di legno, Luì e l'arte di andare nel bosco  (first book of the series hopefulmonster La favola dell'arte), and theatre texts played in schools and theatres of Torino.