Society, childhood and realistic narrations in literature for young people in second post-war period Italy (1946-1962)

Some Italian authors of books for children and young people are analysed in their effort to narrate in a realistic way the post-war reconstruction, the economic recovery which followed and the related social changes that took place in Italy. From the late Forties to the early Fifties the increasing centrality of children's literature emerged within the general area of education, together with an awareness of the difficult situation experienced by children in a world which had to be completely rebuilt, from a material as well as a moral and social perspective, both in Southern and Northern Italy. Children's suffering is witnessed in a range of realities and periods, from the Reconstruction of the 1940s-1950s (narrated by Gianni Rodari, Marcello Argilli, and in part also by Giana Anguissola), to the rapid industrialization and economic boom in a still backward country in the 1950s and 1960s (narrated by Renee Reggiani).