“One day Enza came home and said, ‘Enough!’ She was fed up with the materials she worked with every day—those aimed at children with learning difficulties or autism. ‘They should be able to walk into a bookstore and pick out a beautiful book. A real book.’ That’s where it all began.”
And what was born was Uovonero, a publishing house for children and teenagers, both with and without difficulties, promoting a culture that sees richness in diversity. Sharing the story with us is Sante Bandirali—publisher, writer, translator, and one of the founders of Uovonero along with Enza Crivelli and Lorenza Pozzo.
So it all started with the awareness of a gap…
The starting idea was the recognition of the importance and value of beauty and aesthetics in books for children with disabilities. From that first idea to a serious intention took a couple of years, and then another two to make it real: we studied, developed a publishing plan, and laid the groundwork for what came next, aware that we were stepping into a space unaddressed by the Italian publishing market. We began with three titles the first year, five the second, then seven. Now we’ve stabilized at around 10–12 titles a year.
Your books are not only beautifully designed—they’re meaningful and well-crafted. Having a good idea isn’t enough to make a good book. What guides you when representing disability?
There must be a great story. The novel should be literary, the picture book should have an artistic component, and the text should be told with sensitivity. And disability, while a meaningful element in the story, should never be something artificially spotlighted to make a so-called “issue book” that aims only to explain, often with poor results.
In What a Lucky Boy! (by Lawrence Schimel and Juan Camilo Mayorga, 2019), Davide is introduced by his little brother: he has an amazing memory, he’s great at inventing and telling stories, and he’s lucky enough to read even after the lights go out—because this amazing playmate is blind.
Among the many submissions we receive, when I read “I’ve written a book about autism,” I already know that the manuscript is unlikely to be compelling. Disability shouldn’t feel like a weight being dropped on you—stories like that just don’t work. A great example is The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd, winner of the Andersen Prize in 2012: an extraordinary mystery, one of those (as Simonetta Agnello Hornby writes in the introduction) that keeps you up all night. A boy boards the London Eye, his cousins wait for him below, but when the capsule opens—he’s gone. The story features strong, beautifully written characters, like Ted, the narrator, who has Asperger’s syndrome. It’s never mentioned explicitly, though, because this isn’t a book *about* Asperger’s—it’s just a brilliant children’s mystery. And yet, by the end, you’ve learned so much about Asperger’s.
Your approach is multifaceted: you address children with disabilities, but also children without, helping them understand those who are different, as well as adults who live or work with disadvantaged students…
I often use the metaphor of an egg: the yolk—the core of our publishing project—lies in inclusive picture books that use special codes (like augmentative and alternative communication symbols). But even though they’re created for children with difficulties, they’re not just for them. We always design our books to be equally accessible for children without reading challenges—so they can truly be shared, read at the same level, by an entire class. Then there’s the egg white: literature that addresses these themes for classmates, family members, siblings, friends, neighbors. Finally, the shell that holds everything together: our nonfiction series *I raggi* (“The Rays”), created for professionals, parents, and teachers. It began from our desire to bring key autism texts to Italy that hadn’t yet been translated—such as Autism and the Edges of the Known: Sensory Perception in Autism and Asperger Syndrome by Olga Bogdashina, now considered a reference book on autism.
Finally, no more “special products” for “special children”…
We’ve always seen the idea of “special books for special kids” as a kind of ghetto. Unfortunately, many examples of augmentative and alternative communication out there make reading truly annoying and difficult for people without reading challenges—pushing them away from the text. We try to avoid that so carefully that we’ve begun publishing high readability fiction without even labeling it as such. Take One for the Murphys (2018) by Lynda Mullaly Hunt (which just won the Italian Strega Prize for children’s literature): the fact that it’s a high-readability book appears only in tiny font in the colophon. So no one says “Hey, a high-readability book won the Strega”—they just say, “This book won.” But at the same time, if a child with dyslexia wants to read it, they’ll find it much easier than reading a traditionally formatted book.
Your thoughtful (and smart) attention to the world of disability was also evident during the long lockdown months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The initiative #MeanwhileIDoSomething was our response to #StayAtHome: for over three months, we posted more than 350 activities—four per day—receiving an overwhelming response. The dedicated page on our website had around 80,000 visits (in collaboration with Autismo è and Spazio Nautilus – Milano). That was also Enza Crivelli’s idea—she thought of autistic children who normally attend therapy centers but were now stuck at home.
