Elephants, sun, moon and star. A moose and a bear in a paper mill. A drawing is an idea with a line around it. The fourth issue of Illustratore Italiano in the world of children’s publishing (and much more).

A big top with elephants, trapeze artists, clowns, jugglers and a fire-eater. A story is created under the Christmas lavishly decked table. It is an imaginary show that can be told only by the eyes of a child, who is curled up near his mother’s feet. The fourth issue of Illustratore Italiano opens with the sensitive Mariachiara Di Giorgio. She was commissioned the cover of this last 2016 issue, dedicated to children’s publishing, the famous masters and the new authors of children’s books.

We asked Bruno Bozzetto to tell us what a drawing is and he explained it to us with his Mr Rossi, on a November morning in a the Balzer Café in Bergamo. We had a chat on the future of children’s publishing with Marzia Corraini, one of the Italian most important figures in the field, taking Bruno Munari’s teaching to heart; at the same time, in the room next door, Anna Castagnoli and Giorgio Camuffo talked about the picture book from the point of view of an illustrator and a graphic designer. This time, the sound of nursery rhymes went to Rome, with the colours of “L’Urbe” by Beatrice Cerocchi. They are dialectal lullabies told before the light goes out and Fancesca Corso’s “Babau” tenderly appears in the dark. The sounds followed us during a guided tour of a paper mill, illustrated by Lucio Schiavon.

Other figures contributed to the new issue: Riccardo Falcinelli, editorial designer, examined the material collages by Oscar Sabini; Ivan Canu, director of the MiMaster of Illustration in Milan, had a chat with Irene Guerrieri on toy design. Of course, this issue’s call was dedicated to the story of children’s stories. We chose three illustrations (among the ninety we received) that best depicted the cover for Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio. Moreover, the forth issue includes the final part of two special contents that were published in three episodes: the spin-off of Acrobat Alpha, inspired by Martoz’s Crisma, and In someone else’s shoes, a short story written by the writer Fulvia Mosconi and illustrated by Arianna Vairo.