Hope: A Review

He was a treasury, a true genius—one of those people you learn to love more deeply with each passing year. His name was Gianni Rodari, and the stories, nursery rhymes, words, flashes of insight, and intuitions he left us nourish children and adults alike. To mark the double milestone of his birth and death anniversaries (Rodari was born in 1920 and died at just fifty-nine in 1980), publishers have released countless tributes to this poet of imagination, wonder, respect, and peace. We'd like to call attention to Hope, a picture book that brings one of his poems from Nursery Rhymes in Heaven and on Earth (1960) to young readers, beautifully illustrated by Francesca Ballarini. At its heart is a tiny shop that sells one of the most precious things in existence—at a bargain price. Hope. Read it and read it again, especially in those truly hard moments when even the faintest, most fragile flame seems snuffed out forever.