One of the first people I told I wanted to open a publishing house exclaimed: “Are you crazy?!”In these months I have thought many times about that sentence: every time I went to the accountant, every time I saw myself slowed down by bureaucracy or when something unexpected and problematic happened.
Opening this publishing house made me measure with my ambitions, my limits, and face this cultural choice that made me invest in a project in which I believe, taking all the risks. Staying still, closed, you don’t go anywhere, so I looked over the obstacles and go forward.
The world wants us to be opposed and polarized, labeled on the basis of differences and similarities in ever smaller groups of subsets. In this context, talking to children, telling them about multiculturality, disability, gender differences, families considered “unconventional”, is a way to promote identity and pluralism as a global heritage through dialogue, as well as fundamental rights of all human beings. This also includes the fight against the stereotypes that we would all like to do with the same mold; this would be impossible, very boring and not very stimulating!
Differences are the engine of various abilities, a gateway to other cultures, other stories. They influence development and help the mind to open up, because the more the child feels represented, the better they can be in society. There is a non-profit organization, We Need Diverse Books, which was created to promote the diversity of multiple forms in children’s literature and publication; in the homepage of the site you can read: “Imagine a world in which all children can see themselves in the book”.
Have a good reading