Umberto Eco & Eugenio Carmi III

The third and final children's literature collaboration between Umberto Eco and Eugenio Carmi was 'The Gnomes of Gnu' about the destructive nature of colonisation and environmental destruction.

These three books are not the easy, go lucky books which are now the bread and butter of children's publishing houses. They are by no means; the cute, with no or unbelievably low content, fluff that passes for picture books in most of our societies. These are intellectually, visually complex, thought provoking creations, made to promote discussion and to challenge us and the world that children and parents find themselves in.
In studying the genre of Children's literature and observing the transitions occurring with new technologies and the sanitising effects of market driven publishing, you watch the unique, diverse, inspirational and provocative content and creation of books become a homogeneous, dirge of 'commercial culture', where books not colluding with the expectations of the market are not to be seen. In this way freedom of speech, creativity and progress are hampered and the diversity and interest of books becomes more and more limited.

Umberto Eco and Eugenio Carmi, these fantastic Italian scholars, died within just three days of each other in February 2016.

Umberto Eco & Eugenio Carmi II

The second book produced by Umberto Eco and Eugenio Carmi was 'The Three Astronauts' published in 1966. Umberto Eco placed the space race (as he had the arms race in; 'The Bomb and the General') into the language of a fable, and through the reduction / removal of rhetoric and adult potence puts a mirror up to the madness.

This book shows that it just takes a little time to see that all life is connected and all has the same core ability, experience and response . . . to reach understanding and agreement.

Below is an interview with Eugenio Carmi about 'The Three Astronauts' in preparation for an opera derived from this book.

Umberto Eco & Eugenio Carmi I

I have just discovered works by Umberto Eco and Eugenio Carmi that are incredible thought provoking challenging works of children's literature and illustration. This one, 'The Bomb and the General', is about the atom bomb and a general obsessed by stockpiling them. Though the atoms do not want to be a destructive force and they rebel and run away.

The artwork by Eugenio Carmi is abstract and graphic is as challenging and perplexing as the story. Eugenio builds the imagery from collaged, printed and watercolour elements they are very graphic indeed they remind me of scraps of news that would have caught your eye, as a child, in your parents newspapers. In this way the book reproduces those awkward moments when children glimpse elements of our world that look (in an abstract way) interesting, before knowing the horror and madness, that we all witness, in the abstraction that is news. A world that we even as adults feel is beyond our control or comprehension as we are the hostages of power and ego.