Mondadori

Everyone should read. Everyone can read.

Mondadori Libri per Ragazzi presents its first collection of high-interest books to help its readers develop their skills. A graphics project intended not only for readers with learning difficulties, but for everyone who finds reading challenging. A fun way to help children discover the pleasure of reading and make reading child’s play!

• What exactly is a high-interest book? The features of the high-interest graphics project are:
  use of the leggimi font developed in 2006 by Sinnos in collaboration with neuropsychiatrists, speech therapists and teachers; designed to be easier to read and intended specifically for people with reading difficulties;
• the line spacing and spaces between letters are wider than usual;
• the text is always aligned on the left and there are no word divisions;
• spacing to indicate paragraph divisions or narrative sequences, in order to facilitate understanding and give readers achievable objectives.

20 May 2021
The first four books in the collection

Il diritto di sognare by Sarah Pellizzari Rabolini:
Bea feels she is always second-best, but when she hears the story of Claudette Colvin who, before Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat to a white woman but has been largely forgotten, she learns to come to terms with grading. Sarah Pellizzari Rabolini is an Italian teacher and journalist. She has written novels, poetry and short stories and received a number of awards.

Un salto tra le stelle by Daria Bertoni:
Stella is looking forward to starting her artistic gymnastics training again and there’s a wonderful piece of news: she will be a member of the Gazzelle competition team! Daria Bertoni has worked as bookseller at the Libreria dei Ragazzi in Milan for many years. With Mondadori she has published Stelle in equilibrio and Libera. Un’amica tra le onde.

Scuola di mostri by Sabrina Guidoreni:
It’s the first day at school and Giò is worried. His father says starting something new is always a great adventure, but he’s not so sure. Sabrina Guidoreni was born and lives in Bologna. She studied at Bottega Finzioni, and is a nursery-school teacher and indefatigable reader.

Il bambino fiocco di neve by Viviana Mazza:
The moving true story of Wang Fuman, the little boy who was determined to go to school at any cost. Viviana Mazza is a journalist on the foreign desk of “Corriere della Sera”. She was one of the first people in Italy to tell young people about Malala Yousafzai in her book La storia di Malala.

The Mondadori Group has redesigned its Trade Books Area under the leadership of the chief executive of Mondadori Libri S.p.A. Enrico Selva Coddè, with the aim of pursuing growth and development opportunities for its publishing houses.

“We have defined a new organisational model that will enable us to respond more effectively to the central challenges in trade publishing, a sector in increasingly rapid evolution, also at the international level,” declared Enrico Selva Coddè. “A necessary change to look to the future of the country’s leading cultural industry with the innovative approach that has always characterised our publishing houses,” Selva Coddè concluded.

Consequently, two new crossover departments have been created that will report directly to Enrico Selva Coddè.

The first, the department of General Operations, will be headed up by Filippo Guglielmone, with the aim of orienting the business at the highest possible level of cost efficiency and service possible; operations and sales will be integrated in a single process to drive value generation and make it possible to optimise time-to-market, increase customer satisfaction and facilitate the growth of the publishing houses.

The second, the department for Strategic Marketing, Rights and Acquisitions, to be led by Lorenzo Garavaldi, aims to reinforce the company’s role in the publishing market through analysis and the definition of market strategy, the coordination of acquisition activities and the identification of development priorities.

Reporting to Enrico Selva Coddè, the publishing houses will also absorb product marketing activities giving them all control over communication, in line with a scenario in which the enhancement of authors’ work is part of a single publishing effort that goes from the title to readers’ comments.

The publishing houses are led by Francesco Anzelmo, General Manager of Mondadori; Ernesto Franco, General Manager and Editorial Director of Einaudi; Massimo Turchetta, General Manager of Rizzoli Trade and Publishing & Rights Development; Stefano Peccatori, General Manager of Sperling & Kupfer, Piemme and Mondadori Electa, and Lorenzo Garavaldi, General Manager of BU Ragazzi.

Even today 120 million children around the world do not receive a basic education, and more than half of them are girls. Without the chance to study it is impossible to imagine a future, without adequate quality education there are no opportunities to build a better and more secure life.

The right to an education is even more at risk in countries like Ethiopia, where almost 30 million people live below the poverty line and 30.4% of children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition. Too many boys and girls (70%) are obliged to leave education after primary school in order to help their families by working in the fields and because of a lack of the right kind of support.

This is why, for Christmas, ActionAid together with Mondadori, Einaudi, Rizzoli, Piemme, Sperling&Kupfer, Mondadori Electa and Fabbri Editori have come together to face an important challenge: to guarantee the right to education for 1,800 boys and girls in the Raya Azebo of Ethiopia, one of the places in the world where the provision of primary education is most urgent, and an area that is frequently without access to drinking water and adequate sanitation.

“Going to school in Ethiopia and being able to complete studies with quality education is a right that is denied to too many children especially girls. To able to work alongside a partner like Mondadori is to receive the kind of fundamental support that will make it possible to realise the dreams of 1,800 children who have neither classrooms, nor books or materials. Thanks to the contribution of the publishing houses of the Group we will be able to build two new schools, provide electricity, drinking water and sanitation, support teacher training and build awareness in the local community of the importance of educating girls, in one of the poorest regions of the country,” declared Marco De Ponte, Secretary General of ActionAid.

The importance of an education worthy of the name – that is equal, inclusive and accessible to everyone – is an absolute priority for the Mondadori Group: indeed, it is part of a profound sense among the people who work in the company that it is a natural and fundamental element of our traditions and history as a company” declared Enrico Selva Coddè, Chief Executive of the Trade Area of Mondadori Books. “This initiative allows our publishing houses to go further and engage in a concrete and inclusive solidarity project that will benefit one of the areas of the world in which the need is most urgent. Being able to work alongside a partner like ActionAid is a guarantee for us of the seriousness of our joint commitment” concluded Enrico Selva Coddè.

The project

Most of the schools in the Raya Azebo district have wooden frames and mud walls. And due to the lack of separate toilet facilities for boys and girls, it is impossible for girls to go to school during their menstrual cycle. Such frequent absence from lessons consequently leads to poor results and even abandoning school altogether.

With the “Insieme per l’istruzione” (Together for Education) project, ActionAid and the publishing houses of the Mondadori Group will create a safe school environment for 1,800 children, half of them girls, in the primary schools of the Barie Woyane and Hawulti communities. During 2020 two school buildings, each with four classrooms, a library and separate toilet facilities for girls, will be completed. Also teaching materials and classroom furniture will be provided, along with support for girls and initiatives to improve school governance, with the increased involvement of the local communities.

The progress of the project in Ethiopia can be followed on the web site: insiemeperlistruzione.it.

With this initiative, ActionAid and the publishing houses of the Mondadori Group are committed to the shared support of the fourth of the Sustainable Objectives set by the United Nations for 2030.

ActionAid for schools

Over the last year we have ensured and improved access to free, safe and quality education for boys and girls in around 5,000 schools in 25 countries. We have also involved over 400,000 parents, teachers and students in activities aimed at preventing and combatting the early abandonment of school.

The Mondadori Group for education

We are a publishing house with over 100 years of history. Thanks to our strong links with authors and readers we are acutely aware of our responsibilities, also to civil society. There is no doubt that the right to quality education and information is an essential prerequisite for the development and growth of a country. Consequently, the active promotion, in Italy and around the world, of a culture that is accessible to all, is a central part of our mission and one of the principles of the Group’s sustainability policy.

What ActionAid does

ActionAid is an independent international organisation operating in Italy and in 44 other countries. It collaborates with more than 10,000 partners, alliances, NGOs and social movements to combat poverty and social injustice. For over 40 years ActionAid has been working alongside the poorest and most marginalised people and communities, supporting them in the knowledge that it is only through collective efforts in support of solidarity and justice that real social change can be generated. A fair and equal world for all: this is the vision that inspires ActionAid and provides its strength. In order to transform this vision of the world into concrete reality, ActionAid has adopted a specific mission for the next 10 years: to work for the promotion and adoption of democratic participation and to involve people and communities in the protection of their rights, and to collaborate, at a local, national and international level, for the realisation of change and the spread of social equality, improving the quality of democracy and consequently supporting those who live in situations of poverty and marginalisation.

From this month all new eBooks from the publishing houses of the Mondadori Group– Mondadori, Rizzoli, Einaudi, Piemme, Sperling & Kupfer e Mondadori Electa – will be published in the new ePub3 format.

The Mondadori Group is the first Italian publisher to adopt the most recent international standard for all new digital publications, confirming its commitment to the development of digital publishing and the innovations demanded by the market.

The updating project was completed after a detailed analysis of the new format aimed at further improving the reading experience to make it more inclusive. In fact, the technical specifications of ePub3 make it possible to produce eBook with improved accessibility and graphics.

The new format facilitates the publication of digital text with a higher level of accessibility thanks to more precise metadata, content marking and image description, giving the visually impaired a much wider range of books that can be used with adaptive technologies, such as special keyboards and voice-overs.

This is a continuation of the Mondadori Group’s commitment to extend access to reading for people with sight impairments, to which the company has always paid special attention, also through collaboration with institutions such as the Fondazione LIA and the Fondazione Paideia on ambitious inclusion projects, such as the catalogue of accessible Italian books (https://catalogo.fondazionelia.org) and the digital books in AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication ) project ILIBRIPERTUTTI (https://www.ilibripertutti.it).

Entirely retro-compatible with all reading devices and apps, the ePub3 format will also make it possible to more easily produce books with complex graphics and augmented features, such as multi-media, interactivity and animations.

The Mondadori Group is the market leader in trade books with a total market share of 25.7%. Since 2010 Group has published the majority of its editorial products also as eBooks, with a catalogue of around 20,000 titles.

This year again we will attend the Frankfurt Book Fair, at its 71st edition from 16 to 20 October with our publishing houses and imprints.

It is the most prestigious European event in the field of book publishing.

Mondadori, Rizzoli, Einaudi, Sperling&Kupfer, Mondadori Electa and Piemme will be in Hall 5.0, stand C56.

Segrate, 20 May 2019 – From today, Igor Pagani will taking over editorial responsibility for nonfiction at the Mondadori publishing house, reporting to the editorial director Francesco Anzelmo. Born in Como in 1979, Igor Pagani has a degree in the History of Contemporary Philosophy from the University of Milan, with a dissertation on the Italian editions of the works of Nietzsche. After a Masters promoted by the Mondadori Foundation, he joined the publishing house in 2007 in the Classics department. He completed his training in the Foreign Fiction department  and in 2010 he moved to the Oscar paperbacks department, as editor of nonfiction series. In 2012 he moved again to the Nonfiction Department, first as editor for Italian titles and then, in 2016, also for foreign titles . As well as the Nonfiction Department the other areas  reporting to Francesco Anzelmo are  Italian and Foreign Fiction, Miscellaneous Books, Young Adult Fiction, Paperbacks and Classics.

The Mondadori publishing house is reinforcing the editorial team for foreign fiction led by editorial director Donatella Minuto with the addition of Chiara Scaglioni and Edoardo Brugnatelli.

Chiara Scaglioni, born in Milan in 1972, graduated in Modern Literature from the Catholic University of Milan. She joined the Mondadori publishing house in 2000, where she worked firstly in communications before moving to publishing (miscellaneous books), going on to become Senior Editor of Foreign Fiction. She returns to Mondadori after 5 years at HarperCollins, where she was in charge of foreign fiction and non-fiction.

Edoardo Brugnatelli, born in Milan in 1956, graduated in the History of Philosophy from the University of Pavia and joined Mondadori in 1990. After working on the Comunità editions and foreign non-fiction, in 1998 he created and ran the Strade Blu series, where he published, among others, Michael Moore, Neil Gaiman, Chuck Palaniuk and David Sedaris. Over the last five years Brugnatelli has worked on the social reading platform Anobii.

The foreign fiction department, like Italian fiction, non-fiction, miscellaneous and young adult books, paperbacks and the classics, reports to Francesco Anzelmo, editorial director of the Mondadori publishing house.

June 1929 saw the publication of the first four detective thrillers with a brand new yellow cover design and signalled the beginning of one of the longest-lasting series in international publishing. Since then, in Italy, the only country in the world that uses the term “gialli” (yellow), to describe an entire literary genre, precisely because of the colour of the original covers that not only marked an era, but that continues to the present day.

As Camilleri himself puts it: “The mystery genre is called “giallo” only in Italy. But iit is yellow not for the colour in itself but as a symbol, reflected in the colour of the book covers.”  

The first authors to be published in 1929 were: S.S. Van Dine with La strana morte del signor Benson, E. Wallace with L’uomo dai due corpi, R.L. Stevenson with Il club dei suicidi, and A.K. Green with Il mistero delle due cugine.

And they were an immediate success, with sales of over 50,000 copies in the first month. Since then, for 90 years “Il Giallo Mondadori” has continued to come out on newsstands and has published some 3,200 instalments in the regular series, plus an additional 1,400 Classics and another thousand Special editions and extra issues. An authentic world record, that now other regular series has ever matched. After 90 years “Il Giallo Mondadori” still publishes 40 title per year in five active series, with sales of around 150,000 copies.

Among the great names èublished in Italy thanks to the “Gialli Mondadori” are some of the pillars of this literary genre, including: Agatha Christie with Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple; Ellery Queen with the investigator of the same name; Rex Stout with Nero Wolfe; Erle Stanley Gardner with Perry Mason; S.S. Van Dine with Philo Vance; Ed McBain with the 87^th Precinct; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, as well as Dashiell Hammett, the creator of Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler, Ruth Rendell, James Hadley Chase and Mike Spillane. Meanwhile, Italian authors include Ezio D’Errico and Giorgio Scerbanenco, Carlo Lucarelli and Loriano Macchiavelli, Danila Comastri Montanari, Sandrone Dazieri and many more.

Now, to celebrate this anniversary, a number of new titles by well-known Italian authors of “gialli” will appear in bookstores, first of all by Anrea Camilleri and followed by, among others, Francesco Caringella, Gianrico Carofiglio, Pietro Colaprico, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Marcello Simoni, Valerio Varesi, alongside reprints of some of the “classics” of the series.

The first will appear on 26 Marzo and is an unpublished novel by Andrea Camilleri entitled Km 123 and as reprints, in a new format and with a new design, by Fruttero&Lucentini – La donna della domenica, Renato Olivieri – Il caso Kodra, Edgar Wallace – I quattro giusti, S.S. Van Dine – La strana morte del signor Benson. Other new titles and reprints will follow later in the year.

Km 123 by Andrea Camilleri

It all begins with a switched off mobile phone. The caller is Ester, the non-responder is Giulio, who has ended up in hospital after a bad crash on the Via Aurelia.

The phone is turned on again by Giuditta, Giulio’s wife, who, obviously, knows nothing about Ester. It could be the beginning of a romantic story, but the tone of this story is decidedly different: in fact, a witness claims that Guilio’s crash wasn’t an accident at all, but a murder attempt, and the investigation passes from the insurance company to the police department…

Andrea Camilleri, the undisputed Italian master of the genre, gives us a mix up that is full of both humour and mystery, in which all of the characters – and we as readers too –  are convinced that they have guessed the truth.

Donatella Minuto is the new head of foreign fiction at Mondadori.

At the same time, Alberto Gelsumini, already editorial director of miscellaneous books, will also head up Young  Adult fiction; both reporting to Francesco Anzelmo, the editorial director of the publishing house.

Donatella Minuto was born in Milan in 1971 and has a degree in modern literature from the University of Milan. Her publishing experience began at  Fazi, Bur and Il Saggiatore, and from 2010 to 2017 she worked at Giunti Editore, where she became head of Italian and foreign fiction. She joined Mondadori at the end of 2017 as senior editor of foreign fiction.

Alberto Gelsumini was born in Prato in 1978 and has a degree in the science of communication from the University of Bologna. Having begun his career in journalism and television, he joined Mondadori in 2003 as an editor. Since 2015 he has been the editorial director of miscellaneous books.

Fiammetta Giorgi has been appointed the new Head of Rights for Mondadori.

After completing a degree in Classics, she has always worked in publishing and joined Mondadori in 2002. She held the position of Editor-in-Chief for Children’s Books from 2005 to 2014. After having worked as a translator and editor of Young Adult Fiction Books for Giunti and Rizzoli, she is back in Mondadori to lead the foreign rights team. She reports to the General Manager, Giorgio Cavagnino.

Claudia Scheu, who’s held the Foreign Rights office for over 30 years, will be acting as a consultant for the publisher.