Gianni Rodari with his poems is capable of entertaining but at the same time also making people reflect: an example of this is “The most beautiful day in history”, the poem by Gianni Rodari in which the author dreams of a future in which one does not have to no longer suffer from hunger in any corner of the Earth.
Unfortunately, the world imagined in this nursery rhyme is Utupian: in too many areas of the world there are people who suffer from hunger: but let’s read the verses of the poem to reflect on the simplicity with which Rodari represents what according to him would be “the most beautiful day in history” .
The most beautiful day in historythe poetry of Gianni Rodari
If I were a baker
I would like to bake some bread
Big enough to feed
All, all the people
Who doesn’t have anything to eat
A bread bigger than the sun
Scented golden
Like violets
A bread like this
They would come and eat it
From India and Chile
The poor, the children
the old people and the birds
It will be a date to be studied by heart:
a day without hunger!
The most beautiful day in all history.
A poem to imagine a world without hunger anymore
In his poems, Gianni Rodari manages to convey important messages and teachings with simple and immediate language, capable of reaching adults but above all children, the adults of tomorrow and to whom the hope for a better future is entrusted.
A future with no more people suffering from hunger in the world, the one imagined by the author, who imagines himself in the role of a baker to “bake a bread so big as to feed all the people who don’t have anything to eat”. A bread capable of feeding the whole world, in particular those who suffer from hunger “from India and Chile”.
The problem of world hunger
It would be a historical date, the one in which “the author’s wish” expressed in a nursery rhyme would come true. Unfortunately, this world imagined by Rodari is far from reality: according to Unicef data, on average, every year in the world, 1 million children under the age of 5 die due to malnutrition.
To date, over 13.5 million girls and boys under the age of 5 are in danger of dying due to acute and severe malnutrition. In 2020, 45.4 million children under 5 were severely malnourished, a number that is estimated to reach 59 million by the end of 2022.
The situation is not the best, if we think that in the different areas of the world where there is fighting, such as in Ukraine and the Middle East, wars amplify the difficulty of finding food to feed entire populations and neighborhoods.
But Rodari’s nursery rhymes open the mind and imagination of readers who appreciate his rhymes, inviting us to never separate the power of the imagination from the desire to make the world a better place: in this case a world where no one has to suffer anymore hunger.
It will be a date to be studied by heart:
a day without hunger!
The most beautiful day in all history.
Gianni Rodari
From the beginning of his career as a teacher, Gianni Rodari is forced to experience, like all his peers, the trauma of war – in which he also does not participate because he is exempt due to poor health – and the loss of his loved ones. In fact, there are several poems and nursery rhymes that the author will dedicate to the theme of war and the most unfortunate, just like in the poem “The most beautiful day in history”.
Journalist, writer, poet specialized in children’s literature and pedagogist, Gianni Rodari is the author of numerous and varied works, among which the masterpiece “The grammar of fantasy” stands out, which made him a writer much loved by the little ones.
The stories and poems of which he is the author have contributed enormously to the innovation of the Italian literary canon of childhood.
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