On World Poetry Day, we return to one of the best-loved poetry collections by Roberto Piumini, among Italy’s most popular and prolific writers for children, and winner of the prestigious Andersen Baia delle Favole Prize in 1983.
Che poesia mi racconti? captures the very essence of poetry. It is often dismissed as outdated, but it actually remains vital to the development of key faculties: memory, sensitivity to language, and imagination.
The book unfolds as a sequence of poems, both short and long. There are playful, rhythmic, rhyming tales, while local and personal memories surface throughout. It is a kaleidoscope of places, events, and characters, all delighting in the play of words, sounds, numbers, and seasons. These are verses that conjure up colours, visions, sounds, and feelings.
This book is a true celebration of poetry as a source of both pleasure and learning. As Italo Calvino remarked in a 1981 interview: “learning poems by heart as children, as young people, and also as elderly people… keeps you company… and the development of memory is so important…” And again, poetry as a “talisman for the future.”

Reading age: 6+

Che poesia mi racconti?
Roberto Piumini, illustrations by Manuel Tanco
Einaudi Ragazzi, 2018