Gianni Rodari

Giovanni Francesco Rodari was born 23 October 1920 in Italy, and spent years as a journalist before turning his sharp, slightly anarchic sensibility toward children. His breakthrough was "Il romanzo di Cipollino," a tale of vegetable characters that carried more edge than the premise suggested. The work spread across translations and established him as Italy's defining children's author of the 20th century. In 1970 he won the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, the field's highest honor, for a body of work that remained oddly sparse in English despite its reach elsewhere. He died 14 April 1980, leaving a canon that never quite crossed the Atlantic but shaped generations in his own language.