What Is the Sky?
A collection of universal questions, blending philosophy and humour, designed to spark a search for meaning and to fire the imagination.
This luminous and original picture book, Guia Risari gathers twenty-four universal questions — the kind children ask naturally and adults often struggle to answer. Her responses are playful, unexpected, and poetic: trees bloom because they are incorrigible optimists; bees make honey because they don’t know how to make jam; we are born out of curiosity. Rather than offering scientific explanations, the book celebrates imagination as a way of knowing. Each spread pairs a short question-and-answer exchange with Marianna Balducci’s visually rich compositions, where drawing merges seamlessly with photography, creating surprising and dreamlike scenes.
The result is a book that can be read again and again, each time opening new interpretations and conversations — an ode to curiosity, to shared reflection, and to the endless pleasure of asking “why?”
By the same author or illustrator
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Ada Upside Down
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From award-winning author and illustrator Marianna Balducci comes a sharp, ironic tale that playfully exposes the absurdity of power and reminds us that what belongs to everyone can’t be taken by just one – especially not the sky. Driven by blind ambition, a stern admiral sets out to steal the unstealable: the sky. Bit by bit, he does the impossible…
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Vita, an elderly Sicilian woman, is confined to her home, where she is reflecting on the past and putting her emotions in order, and she decides to leave a testimony to her granddaughter Nina. Through her memories, she tells the story of her youth, the times when she embroidered and fought against exploitation. Inspired by a true story, the novel recounts the great mobilisation of…
