Villa Filippini opened its doors on Friday afternoon to a world full of imagination, wonder and innocence: “Il mondo di Mela”, a book just released (published by Bellavite), created by disabled children of the L’Iride social cooperative of Calò, and presented during the special afternoon occasion to the city authorities.
That of “Mela”, the little girl protagonist of the fairy tale, is a world between the dreamlike and the real, divided between her desire to know reality, and the importance of maintaining strong reference figures – her grandparents – who know how to direct and look after.
“We boys and girls from L’Iride invented the story – explains Alessandra Merlini –. Mela lives in a small house in the woods, with her grandparents. She does many activities throughout the day, she goes to pick mushrooms, she meets her friends and comes into contact with the animals. First she is afraid of the threat of a wolf, then she is taken to safety by an owl. I can’t tell the whole story, but I can say that it is gripping and has a happy ending.” Like any self-respecting fairy tale, after all. And Alessandra’s story at L’Iride is also a sort of fairy tale. “I feel very comfortable here – he comments – we are all very united and close-knit. There were 10 of us who worked on this book, together with the children from the Calò nursery school and the children from Gandhi. But overall there are many more of us and we do a lot things in the cooperative: embroidery, assembly workshops, creative workshops, art therapy, pet therapy, swimming pool, bowling, volunteering with Caritas and the food bank”. Among the activities that the social cooperative has always offered to its members, the one in the newly released book shines for its originality. “The idea of creating and editing this fairy tale came from the theme of proper care, which we were reflecting on with the children – explains Elisabetta Pesenti, educator in charge of the book project –. Due to the situation they live in, they receive a lot of care, which sometimes risks making them feel suffocated. In this case, they were the ones who took care of the kindergarten children with whom they worked on this fairy tale. Yes, because the book was born with the collaboration of 19 children from the Don Enrico kindergarten Colombo di Calò – explains the educator – who were tutored by our kids. And so beautiful ideas emerged, like Mela’s rainbow hair, and the drawings of all the tables that now serve as illustrations for the book”.
The students of the Iiss Gandhi of Villa Raverio then created the dummy and took care of the graphics (with the collaboration of the Besanese bookshop Libri e Giochi). “Every aspect of this publication was original – concludes the representative –. The story as it was conceived and written, the creation of the graphic parts and their digitalisation, the idea of a version that will be released shortly for tactile reading, the multiple translations (English, Arabic, Spanish and German), and the augmentative communication.” Thus the Park of Villa Filippini, in those hours, took on new forms, with salt dough workshops, drawing and modeling activities, pet therapy with many furry friends: a reality steeped in dreams, like that of Mela .
