The Befana’s Toyshop/La freccia azzurra

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An unusual and original book – despite a rather garish cover – is Telephone Tales, translated from the Italian of Gianni Rodari […]. A father who has to go off on business telephones a light-hearted tale each night to his little daughter – and he has to be quick and to the point before his pennies run out.

(Good Housekeeping, 1965: 5)

The reader in this case is informed that the book is a translation, even though the translator remains invisible. Again there is a reference to the brevity of each story, thus suggesting the short reading time required on the reader’s part; there is no reference to the content of stories. The fact that the book is a translation and the mention of the reading time may account for the public that was supposed to read this review. Parents are informed of the foreign origin of the text, but also that it is an “unusual and original book” suggested for reading together with children. The reviews presented in this section have shown how reviewers highlighted different aspects of Rodari’s first text on the British market according to the supposed interests of the public, primarily composed of adults as parents and scholars in the field of children’s literature.

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British market, and a short story crossed the ocean to appear in Cricket magazine for children in the US (a commentary on the stories published in this magazine is given in 3.2.1).

J.M.Dent & Sons¹⁴¹ was founded in 1888 in London, and soon distinguished itself as a publishing house that promoted high literature for the lay reader at an affordable price. The Everyman’s Library¹⁴² started in 1906 and soon valued for its

“unprecedented […] breadth, coherence, and beautiful design” (Rose, 2004) It included classics (Greek, Roman) but also English, American and western European authors in translation from Italy, France, Norway and Germany. The Library included classics for children such as Andersen’s fairy tales, yet it was with the Temple Library that Dent started to promote books for young people on a steadier basis, also including translated authors. J.M.Dent also had an interest in Italian culture having been a constant visitor to Italy himself through the years. The publishing house contributed, like Harrap, to providing the British public with samples of Italian classics (e.g. Alessandro Manzoni) also from Latin (e.g. Virgilio) and 20^th century authors (Massimo Bontempelli), a choice that may justify the interest of the publishing house in a new children’s author like Rodari.

The peritextual material for The Befana’s Toyshop, distributed as a hardback book, shows some additions in terms of information about the author, and an extended description of the plot compared to the Harrap edition of Telephone Tales. On the front flap the intervention of the publisher on the presentation of the book to the public is indicated in bold:

141 As shown in the survey in 1.1.3, Dent was one of the most active publishing houses in the field of translated children’s books, with a preference for German and Italian writers.

142 This collection was meant to appeal to “the worker, the student, the cultured man, the child, the man and the woman”, a “democratic library at the democratic price of one shilling” (Dent, 1938: 123-126). A revolutionary aspect of Dent publishing house is that it was the first to introduce book-jackets on the market, with an indication of other books published by Dent, and only around the 1930s did Dent begin to include the descriptive piece on the book, called blurb (Armstrong Ross, 1976).

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Hans Christian Andersen Award winner, 1970 The Befana’s Toyshop

A Twelfth Night Story

To the Italians the Befana is the counterpart of Father Christmas. She is, however, a rather disconcerting broomstick-riding old lady who brings presents to children on Twelfth Night.

In this story she keeps a shop with a display of toys in the window, of which the most wonderful of all, in the eyes of little Francesco, is the train called ‘The Blue Arrow’. But Francesco’s parents are poor. There is no hope of his ever having such a present.

The toys, who have seen Francesco’s wistful face at the window so often, decide to run away and find him. Rag, the toy dog, can sniff out the way for them. So they all set off on their great adventure.

The General is always imagining enemies and wanting to send his soldiers into battle. Captain Halfbeard commands unchallenged from the bridge of his ship – which travels in a goods wagon. Indian Chief Silver Feather takes the pipe out of his mouth to speak rare words of wisdom whenever things grow tense – as when the soldiers have to build a Meccano pontoon bridge over a puddle, when the cannons disappear down a drain, or when they all have to hide from the Befana.

While the toys bravely struggle on, Francesco has his adventures too – ending unexpectedly in the police station. The toys fail to find him, and Rag, the dog, is in despair. But justice triumphs and Rag’s devotion finds a reward beyond his wildest dreams.

This is an enchanting tale for children in the seven-to-ten age group.

The sentences emphasised show the pragmatic function of the peritext that focuses on the importance of the author as an award winner, on the Italian context where the story is set (“To the Italians”) together with a clarification of who the Befana is through the familiar figure of Father Christmas, and finally on the prospective public for the book.

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There is no mention of the translator, only the indication of the illustrators Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone.

The back flap presents a short biography of Rodari, who is introduced to the British public through the cultural filter of the editor, emphasised in bold:

Gianna [sic] Rodari was born in Piemonte, Italy, in 1920. His first job was in teaching; later he entered journalism and became director of Il Pioniere, a magazine for children. For the past two years he has been director of Il Giornale dei Genitori (Parents’ Journal). He started writing books for children in 1950 and has since completed a number of such volumes of a quality that has made his name famous throughout Italy – he is the favourite children’s author there – and to an increasing extent in other countries too. His books of verbal fun and rhymes (unfortunately untranslatable) are much quoted, just as Alice’s sayings are in Britain. Signor Rodari won the important Hans Christian Andersen Award, presented at Bologna in 1970, for the contribution of his writing to the development of children’s literature.

Rodari’s experience as a journalist and director of a magazine for children is accompanied by his long-standing career in children’s literature (since 1950). The editor emphasised the fact that Rodari is “famous throughout Italy” as the “favourite children’s author there” and around the world, suggesting an appeal that crosses the barriers of cultural difference. Nevertheless, part of his work is “unfortunately untranslatable” and the editor quickly reassures the readers that Rodari’s humour is comparable to “Alice’s sayings” in Britain, a familiar reference that brings Rodari back to the common denominator of the readers’ national canon. The Andersen Award closes the biography, and all other Italian prizes won by Rodari suddenly disappear. The description above shows the need to resort to familiar references for the British public to bring Rodari closer to the receiving culture.

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This need is emphasised on the back jacket cover. It promotes three authors published by Dent, two of whom are foreign (Paul Biegel and Bohumil Riha¹⁴³). For both these foreign authors the editor wished to make readers feel comfortable with the foreignness of these writers for children: Biegel’s story “has been awarded high honours in Holland and Germany”, whereas Riha’s novel “is by one of Czechoslovakia’s best-selling authors, but it contains nothing that would seem at all strange to an English child”. The pragmatic function of this peritext may be to suggest that foreign authors have something to offer to English-speaking readers, given their successful career in their home countries.

In The Befana’s Toyshop there is a table of contents with 21 chapters, against the 22 of the original book. The chapter that was eliminated in translation narrated the death of an old woman on a cold winter’s night, therefore it is possible that it was omitted to avoid any reference to death in the novel in English. The first chapter was expanded in translation because it included a description of who the Befana is for Italian children, an addition required to make the text (and especially one of the main characters of the story) intelligible to the young target readers. The translator added a description in the first chapter to begin with a tour of the world and of the various figures that bring gifts to children, to come back to Italy with the Befana in the end.

This insertion, not present in the source text, was to become useful for reviewers as shown in the following description.

The Befana’s Toyshop was advertised in the TLS in October 1970, with the indication of “Hans Christian Andersen Prize, 1970” under the name of the author.

Rodari is the only foreign author on the page. In another advert that appeared in The Listener in the same year Rodari is advertised together with Gunnel Linde, a well-known Swedish author especially in the US (together with Karin Anckarsvärd, as discussed in 1.1.2), and for each book there is a suggestion of the age range of readers

143 Paul Biegel was a German writer, among the most translated authors from this language in the UK. His translators include Gillian Hume and Patricia Crampton, a reference to Biegel is present in 1.1.3. Bohumil Riha was a Czech writer for children; he won the Andersen Award in 1980, ten years after Gianni Rodari.

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(7-10 years old in the case of Rodari’s book). Neither of the two advertisements refers to the fact that the book is a translation, nor does it indicate the name of the translator or illustrator as part of the advertisement. Other advertisements appeared in The School Librarian; in line with the other advertisements, there is only a reference to the Andersen Prize but no indication of the translator or to the fact that the book is a translation from Italian.

Reviews of the book are dated 1971, starting with The Junior Bookshelf which dedicates a long review to Rodari’s second book in English. The first part follows the rewritten first chapter as mentioned earlier on, an explicitation of who the Befana is to Italian children. Throughout the review there is no indication of the translator, but a few elements point to the foreignness of Rodari, emphasised in bold:

Signor Rodari is Italy’s leading writer of stories for children, and at the 1970 Bologna Book Fair he was awarded the international Hans Christian Andersen award for his contribution to children’s literature. This story of delicacy and charm is filled with the joy and goodness which are so essential a part of Christmas. (The Junior Bookshelf, 1971: 44)

The epithet ‘Signor’ follows the biographical details adopted by Dent on the book back flap, again with reference to his success in Italy as “leading writer of stories for children” but also of his worldwide recognition as an important contributor to children’s literature with the Andersen Prize. The universality of his message is emphasised at the end, where Christmas becomes synonymous with “joy and goodness” which pervade the book in the words of the reviewer.

Probably the most extensive review of this work by Rodari was written by Ann Lawson Lucas (2006). Her essay aimed at introducing Rodari as an unknown writer to the English-speaking public¹⁴⁴, presents The Befana’s Toyshop as an example of the

144 This aspect was emphasised in the introduction to Beyond Babar: the European tradition in children’s literature. Rodari is presented here as one of “the most important twentieth-century children’s authors”

(Beckett, 2006: vii), more specifically “the most significant Italian children’s author of the

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scant success that he had in the UK. The reasons for this were listed by Lucas starting from the “more learned and specialized-sounding” (2006: 101) title that includes the foreign word Befana, which called for an extensive explanation in the voice of the translator of the importance that this figure has at Christmas time for Italian children.

Moreover, it seems that the episodic structure of the book – where chapters do not have numbers, only titles – recalls a collection of stories bound together by a ‘frame’, deeply rooted in the Italian tradition but not in the English one. Lucas presented Rodari as the master of subversion¹⁴⁵, providing a contextualisation of Rodari in Italy and a description of the main characteristics of The Befana’s Toyshop in terms of characters, setting, and plot. There is little reference to the experience of Creagh as writer and translator, nor to the British context that actually welcomed Rodari’s book in translation with an account of other Italian authors. Her concern is also to show the link between Rodari and Collodi, the latter being a more familiar ground for the English-speaking public.

Compared to Telephone Tales, The Befana’s Toyshop included some biographical details on Rodari, but still no indication of the translator beyond the publishing details at the beginning of the book. The Befana’s Toyshop was advertised through newspapers and specialised magazines in children’s literature, and gained a spot in one of the reference magazines that reviewed children’s books: the details on the foreignness of Rodari were limited to his nationality. The emphasis is mainly on his international recognition as winner of the Andersen Award, and his ability to address

‘universal’ topics that would appeal to children from all over the world. The pair Rodari/Andersen Prize was to become a constant in the peritext of Rodari’s books in English translation after The Befana’s Toyshop, starting from A Pie in the Sky.

century (that is to say, he is surpassed only by Carlo Collodi)”, still showing the international reputation of Collodi in the English-speaking world.

145 Lucas makes extensive reference to La Grammatica della fantasia/The Grammar of Fantasy to show the creative character of Rodari but also with an eye to the objective of Beyond Babar, which is to provide

“instructors of children’s literature” but also the lay public with references to literature classics for children from the European tradition translated in English.

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