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Seventy-five years ago, a children's book called "The Adventures Of Cipollino" was published in Italy. It's about a little onion fighting to free his father from a tyrannical lemon. Last year, it was published for the first time in English, winning praise from everyone from New York Magazine to the American Library Association. But as Deena Prichep reports, this book has a surprising history.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: Jennifer Hubert Swan is a school librarian. When she first got "The Adventures Of Cipollino" to review for The New York Times last year, she thought, kids are going to love this.
JENNIFER HUBERT SWAN: We start out with fruits and vegetables, and then suddenly there's a spider. And then they go to a zoo, and all the animals can talk.
PRICHEP: In this fantasy world, Cipollino's father is thrown in prison for something he did not do, and the tiny onion goes on an epic quest to free him. The book has the sort of funny, dramatic passages that are perfect for young readers, like 9-year-old Izzy Andreen.
IZZY ANDREEN: (Reading) Ouch, ouch, Cipollino yelled, though still as cheerful as ever. I'll show you, Cavalier Tomato bellowed, and he yanked so hard that a shock of Cipollino's hair came off in his very own hand.
PRICHEP: Izzy got the book from his dad for New Year's. And when his mom saw what he was reading...
YANA YAKHNES: I thought, wait a minute. Is this the Cipollino that I read as a kid?
PRICHEP: Yana Yakhnes grew up in Moscow, where Cipollino has a long history.
YAKHNES: It's so ubiquitous to the culture in Russia. I remember my mom reading the book to me, and I also really remember the cartoon. It was on TV all the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "CIPOLLINO")
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR: (As character, speaking non-English language).
PRICHEP: The story of a poor onion winning out over the fancy vegetables resonated with the Soviet ideas of class consciousness. There were Cipollino dolls and a movie, even a ballet.
(SOUNDBITE OF KAREN KHACHATURIAN'S "CIPOLLINO, ACT 1 SCENE 1: EVERYBODY'S DANCE")
PRICHEP: So how did this Italian onion become a Soviet staple? It's because of the author, Gianni Rodari.
GIULIA DE FLORIO: We know him as a - one of the most prominent writers of children's books but actually started his career as a journalist in a communist-oriented newspaper.
PRICHEP: Giulia De Florio teaches Slavic studies at the University of Parma. She says Rodari, a literal card-carrying communist, toured the Soviet Union in the 1950s and brought along a copy of his book.
DE FLORIO: Cipollino is a story of injustice and rebellion and revolt.
PRICHEP: De Florio says Soviet publishers took this book, which at that point, wasn't even popular in Italy, and printed millions of copies to mold new Soviet citizens. When Yana Yakhnes read Cipollino as a kid, she loved how it poked fun at the upper class.
YAKHNES: There's some line in there about how, you know, Cipollino's father is sentenced to life in prison but even longer because Prince Lemon also owns the cemetery by the prison. And it's so bleak, right? Like, it's so bleak but also so funny.
PRICHEP: But as an adult, she wonders who the joke is really on.
YAKHNES: It's written by somebody who so believes in the communist dream, but then it also, in a lot of ways, reads as a critique of what the Soviet government became.
PRICHEP: The intricacies of Soviet politics will likely go over the head of the average young reader. But librarian Jennifer Hubert Swan says kids have a keen sense of what's fair. Adults have power over them, and they don't often get to challenge it. So they love reading about kids who do, even if that kid is a stinky little onion.
SWAN: I mean, kids love books where adults are falling down. And so kids aren't going to necessarily see that as a political framework. They're going to be like, oh, that's my math teacher, who I hate.
PRICHEP: As Americans read "The Adventures Of Cipollino," they may see those powerful figures as unfair parents or the bourgeoisie or politicians or just an enjoyably ridiculous tomato. For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLIPSE, ET AL. SONG, "ALL THINGS CONSIDERED") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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