I prelibri

A - But what do you use a book for?
B - To learn about things or to amuse oneself, in any case to add to one’s knowledge of the world.
A - Oh, I see, it helps to make life more fun.
B - Yes, very often.

The PREBOOKS (a cult nowadays), published for the first time by Bruno Danese in 1980, are a series of twelve small books ideally dedicated to very young children which have not yet learned how to read or write. These twelve little books (10 x 10 cm) are designed to fit into small hands and come in many different and unusual colours, bindings and materials.
They offer a variety of stimuli, sensations and emotions, raising from perceptions and images: “they should give the sensation that books are indeed objects made like this and that they contain a wide array of surprises. Culture comes out of surprises, which are things that were unknown before” (B. Munari).

Once again Munari is ahead of his time: while computers are entering more and more deeply into young children’s lives this project helps them to smell, touch, watch and even taste the objects they have around them so that they do not lose contact, literally, with the concreteness of reality.