Thirty-two years have passed since May 23, 1992 when the magistrate lost his life on the motorway between Punta Raisi airport and Palermo, killed by the mafia. Giovanni Falconethe wife Francesca Morvillo and the escort agents Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo And Antonio Montinaro. Since then, generations and generations have passed at school, but the names of Falcone and Paolo Borsellino remain. Everyone knows who the two men are who lost their lives in the fight against organized crime in 1992. The families of the victims undoubtedly made an important contribution to this knowledge: Falcone’s sister Maria, but also the widow of the escort leader Antonio Montinaro as well as Paolo Borsellino’s sister, Rita; his wife, Agnese and the magistrate’s children. With them many writers and journalists who, thanks to some books, have brought history to our schools and families. Here are some texts (among the latest published and more) to talk to the little ones about Giovanni Falcone and the Capaci massacre.
“The cane di Falcone” by Dario Levantino – Fazi Editori – (Recommended age: from 9 years)
In 1992 the author of this book had not yet been born. Yet these pages are the children of one of those young people – now a 38-year-old man – who were able to become passionate about this story that changed the fate of the country. In the book Levantine tells the events related to Giovanni Falcone (his work, the Palermo of those years, the court) through a dog, Uccio “adopted” by the magistrate who lovingly welcomes him in the atrium of the Palace of Justice. A friendship, that between Uccio and the judge, which will continue until the end when the dog will have to deal with Falcone’s death. In the end, old and with the last of his strength, Uccio takes up residence right at the courthouse to watch over the statue of the judge targeted by the thugs.
“You didn’t do anything to us. The fight against the mafia by Antonio Montinaro and Giuovanni Falcone yesterday, today and tomorrow” by Tina Montinaro (DeAgostini) (Recommended age: from 10 years)
These pages are written by the widow of the policeman and escort leader of Giovanni Falcone who disappeared in the explosion of May 23, 1992 on the highway to Capaci. Since Tina Montinaro she is one of the most committed witnesses and created the “Quarto Savona Diecici” Garden of Memory (from the code name of the escort car). In this book he tells us about that boy from Puglia, Antonio, lively, who hates injustice and who decides to join the police by agreeing to move to Palermo in the most difficult years of the fight against the mafia. A book capable of telling about that era (the meeting with Falcone, the maxi trial) through Montinaro’s eyes.
“May in Palermo – A story for Francesca Morvillo” by Gilda Terranova – Einaudi Ragazzi (Recommended age: from nine years)
A book not about Falcone but about his wife, Francesca Morvillo. She was also a magistrate but above all a co-protagonist of that period who lived escorted next to her husband until she shared his fate. Gilda Terranova fields Laura, a teenager like many in the Eighties: teased hair, pins with singers’ faces pinned on denim jackets, boot-style skates to move around quickly. She attends a high school in Palermo and every morning at the bar she meets an elegant, kind-looking woman. She would really like to shake her hand but the woman lives under her guard. Thirty years have passed since her death, and little has yet been written about Francesca Morvillo, the only female magistrate victim of the mafia. An emptiness that perhaps derives from the same reserve that characterized her life.
“We are all capable” by Rosario Esposito La Rossa – Einaudi Ragazzi (Recommended age: from nine years)
It is a book that many young people and many professors who in recent years have made educational trips to Palermo could have written to learn more about what happened thirty-two years ago. A high school teacher, one hot day in May, takes his kids into the garden and invites them to dig a hole. He only stops them when the pit has reached the size of four meters x five, the same as the crater formed in the highway after the explosion that caused Falcone’s death. It is the prelude to a journey that is told in these pages, accompanying the reader in the steps of the magistrate. (Reading age from eleven years)
