L'uomo del Camion
L'uomo del Camion (The Truck Driver)
Written and Illustrated by Bruno Munari
Italy, Mondadori, 1945
Kerlan Collection, Children's Literature Research Collections
University of Minnesota Libraries
Bruno Munari broke with Futurism in the 1940s. The Futurists had high-flown ideals of the book being a "reading machine"; here, Munari embraces the more lighthearted concept of the picture book as a toy. In a series of 10 groundbreaking books published in Italy in 1945 and afterwards in England, France, and the United States, Munari probed the genre's physical potential, incorporating different- sized pages, art concealed behind paper doors, and even books-within-books to lure pre-readers to literacy. Never a confident writer, Munari crafted simple storylines in amusing, game-like structures. In L'uomo del camion (titled The Birthday Present in the U.S. edition), a delivery man bearing a gift for a child changes vehicles repeatedly in descending size order from truck to roller skates.
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