Five books for Valeria

With Pier de’ Soldi coming to Italian bookstores today the first series of Madonna’s children books, started in September 2003 with The English Roses is now complete in Italy as well.
To coincide with the Italian release of Lotsa De Casha the MadonnaTribe team had a nice chat with Valeria Raimondi, Editor of Feltrinelli’s children’s book collection “Kids”, about the unique experience of translating these stories for children (even grown-up ones) by Madonna, into the language of her Ciccone ancestors.

“I have always had a great respect for Madonna as a great professionist”, Valeria told MadonnaTribe. She adds: “I had the chance to meet her at the presentation of these books and now I am even more sure about that. She is a person who is very serious in everything she does. Although the books have not been welcomed well by everybody I think they are made with integrity and I think this is what matters, especially to kids.”

Asked to analyze Madonna‘s writing style Valeria explaines that “the stile is always constant, with a well defined, omniscient and external narrator who always uses the same type of simple language, with repetitions that belong to the oral tradition fable, to the Grimm Brothers‘ stories and what comes from that. I think Madonna didn’t want to be presumptuous in this, she didn’t want to invent something new but she inspired herself to the tradition of classic fables” Valeria told us.

And speaking about the Italian adaptation Raimondi explains that “the most difficult thing in the latest book was to translate the title that in English is a pun on words meaning ‘lots of cash’. I had to look for something that could also translate the pun of words but at the same time it could work as a character’s name, and something that was not completely different from the original. There were many suggestions, I did a sort of survey because being the book a co-edition there are rules for the lenght of words that need to be respected as the graphic layout of the book is the same for every language.
I remember some suggestions that were way too long to reproduce within the layout, even if they were very nice. I think that the title that has been chosen is the best compromise between the lenght of words, their meaning and their sound. We had to take into consideration all these factors and I think that Pier de’ Soldi is a title that could work well.

To read our full exclusive chat with Valeria Raimondi please click on the image below.

Thanks to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore.