The Sound of Silence: Metaphors of Childhood, Disability, and Incommunicability in Italian Children’s Literature

The article aims to highlight some recurring trends in disability representation in Italian contemporary children’s literature. In particular, after a brief excursus of the major changes that occurred in editorial production at the end of the twentieth century, the article focuses on the similarities between the condition of disability and childhood, both bearers of otherness in the conventional adult world and in a liminality position within society. Contemporary children’s authors seem to start from this assumption and repeatedly write stories on special encounters between characters with disabilities and children. In these delicate narratives, in a romantic projection, only the younger ones prove they are able to create deep relationships based on unconditional acceptance of diversity and the ability to bond beyond words—both elements that adults seem to lack. The topic of incommunicability returns, especially, in picturebooks and is expressed through powerful iconographic and literary metaphors. Some of these are inspired by certain popular Italian expressions and recur very frequently, in different ways, within children’s literature, such as allusive references to the aquatic world, intended as the silent realm par excellence.