... a collection of children’s stories intended to be short enough that one could be read during a 20th-century pay phone call, as the Italian title, Favole al telefono, suggests more explicitly. It is also unapologetically political, using unlikely situations and imaginary worlds to prompt readers to question the status quo.
The 67 tales in the collection show us where Rodari came from, and where he was going. A few are frank agitprop ... As the book’s translator, Antony Shugaar, has pointed out, the subject of a number of the stories is simply how not to be a Fascist ... Rodari learned critical thinking from Marxist doctrine. Whatever he writes about, he subjects to questioning, scrutiny, a mild irradiation of irony, or just wit ... Some stories in Telephone Tales...journey into distant realms of strangeness ... In keeping with his leftist sympathies, there is a rich vein of utopianism in Rodari’s work ... Some people have asked whether Rodari’s writing, so witty and strange, is not better suited to adults than to children, but children apparently love it ... It would be hard for anyone, of any age, not to love the illustrations ... The pages are sewn with stitches worthy of a Balenciaga gown. It is astonishing that the book costs only $27.95. Go buy one, right now ... Rodari fans, however, should thank the U.S.S.R. By inspiring him and then disappointing him, it set him free, to work in a genre, the so-called children’s tale, where he would not have to confront his bitterness. And, in the end, it drove him beyond bitterness, into a wonderful wildness.
Telephone Tales – published in 1962 as Favole al telefono – contains a dazzling collection of stories, displaying the full range of Rodari’s imagination, to be read at various levels but always with whole-hearted enjoyment ... The book itself is a thing of beauty, with tantalizing, full-colour illustrations by Valerio Vidali over double-page, fold-out spreads. Antony Shugaar devises parallels to Rodari’s exuberantly inventive language and finds an equivalent to the rhythms of his prose.
Those 67 whimsically surreal tales, most as short as the time one coin allotted — first published together in Italian in 1962 and finally all brought together again in a new English translation — make up this treasure trove of a book ... Valerio Vidali’s new illustrations, inspired by the act of doodling on a message pad, match Rodari’s radical playfulness. Vibrant and fanciful, they run the gamut from small inserted flaps of paper to brightly colored foldout drawings.
The stories range in tone from the fanciful to the absurd to the philosophical. What they have in common is brevity—Bianchi 'couldn’t afford to make extended long-distance phone calls'—and a subversive quality that would seem to reflect the author’s communist leanings ... All sorts of imaginative leaps take place in this handsome book, but it is not fare for, shall we say, the masses—the stories tend too much toward the whimsical and arch. It’s an open question whether children ages 4-8 (or the parents who read to them) will have sufficient interest to carry them through to the end.
At times whimsical, absurd, and subversive, the stories carry readers along roads made of chocolate, under skies that rain Jordan almonds, and into children’s private language. They also speak to today’s urgent concerns—human connection, the injustice of inequality, and the dangers of authoritarianism ... Numerous gatefold spreads and tipped-in pages add to the rich texture of this beautifully produced volume.
Each story is accompanied by an illustration, many inventive and done in highly saturated colors; most humans are depicted with magenta skin. Many stories include gatefold illustrations; others are illustrations on inset small pages, attached to the recto of a spread. Virtually all playfully ask readers to stop and think ... Offbeat tales for readers in the mood for something whimsically contemplative.
