Save the Story
by‘Save the Story’ is a library of favourite stories from around the world, retold for today’s children by some of the best contemporary writers. Each book is beautifully illustrated and accompanied by an author’s afterword describing its origin. The series was conceived by Alessandro Barricco, working in close collaboration with Scuola Holden in Turin, which was founded specifically to develop new and innovative ways of telling stories. The series has been a great success in Italy, and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew and Chinese. Pushkin Children’s Books is publishing the full series for the first time in English.
The four launch titles (above) are The Story of Antigone by Ali Smith, illustrated by Laura Paoletti, The Story of Captain Nemo by Dave Eggers, illustrated by Fabian Negrin, The Story of Don Juan by Alessandro Baricco, illustrated by Alessandro Maria Nacar and translated by Ann Goldstein and The Story of Gulliver by Jonathan Coe, illustrated by Sara Oddi.
“There are many writers in the world who are able to tell, each in their own style but all of them in today’s language, the story of the character they most love. We asked them to imagine retelling their favourite story to their children or their grandchildren… It is not very important that the Save the Story books are a faithful reproduction of the original text; what counts is that a child experiences the magic of that story through the narrator’s voice or through the wide eyes of the father or mother who reads it to them at bedtime.”
Alessandro Baricco
Read an extract from The Story of Gilgamesh by Yiyun Li, illustrated by Marco Lorenzetti.
