The Story of the Root Children

A classic of children’s literature since 1906 that has been translated into many languages (in Italian as La piccola storia dei bambini radice from Pulce Edizioni), The Story of the Root Children hasn’t lost its relevance in terms of content, style, or illustrations over its 117-year lifespan. Writer and nun Sibylle von Olfers wrote and illustrated 10 children’s books with a peculiar and recognisable “art nouveau style”. Flowers, earth, trees, industrious ants and the human world intersect to construct the passion and wonder of children faced with nature with attention and detail. Indeed, they are the main characters in this illustrated book. In symbiosis with nature, the “root children” accompany us through the cycle of the seasons, teaching us the magic of little actions that make nature around us so extraordinary and reminding us – preparing for a wonderful spring – of the flavour of small things, little signals that, like shoots, are the beginning of something much bigger, of which children are a part. And this delicate volume is directed towards these same children, with the aim of bringing them closer to respect for Nature and a passion for reading. The Pulce publishing house’s decision to use block capitals to encourage independent reading by children also relates to this. The rhyming Italian text, set into its wonderful illustrations, very sweetly accompanies little readers into the natural world, opening wide a situation which is both real and fantastic at the same time. First and foremost, the book is an enchantment that you enter and from which you never emerge.  

La piccola storia dei bambini radice
by Sibylle von Olfers
Pulce, 2021