Telephone Tales

Gianni Rodari, Valerio Vidali (illustrator), Anthony Shuugar

A collection of nearly seventy short and surreal stories told by Signor Bianchi, a traveling salesman, to his daughter over the telephone nightly. Every night, at nine o’clock, wherever he is, Mr. Bianchi, an accountant who often travels for work, calls his daughter and tells her a bedtime story. Set in the 20th century era of pay phones, each story has to be told in the time that a single coin will buy. One night, it’s the story of a carousel so beloved by children that an old man finally sneaks on to understand why, and as he sails above the world, he does. The next night, it’s a land filled with butter men, roads paved with chocolate, or a young shrimp who has the courage to defy expectations and do things differently. Reminiscent of Scheherazade and One Thousand and One Nights, Gianni Rodari’s Telephone Tales is composed of many stories within a story....