The Help, the debut novel by Kathryn Stockett (published in Italy by Mondadori), and a bestseller with sales of over 10 million copies around the world and over a million ebook downloads of Amazon, is coming to the big screen.

The film, which is on general release in Italy from 20 January, is a faithful account of the story told by Kathryn Stockett in her book.
At the beginning of the ’60s, in a small town in Mississipi, three extraordinary and completely different women join forces for a common project.
Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, played in the film by Emma Stone, is a young graduate recently returned from college to live with her family who finds it hard to conform to the plan of married life prepared for her by her mother. She prefers to dedicate herself to her one big passion, writing.
Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), meanwhile, is a caring black maid who has, one after another, brought up seventeen white children and who has to face the loss of her own son, killed in an accident at work to the general indifference of the local mainly white community.
Minny (Octavia Spencer) is Aibileen’s best friend. Short, overweight and with a violent husband, despite being an excellent cook, she moves from family to family due to her inability to control her behaviour.
Despite marked social, cultural and character differences, the three women begin to work secretly on a book that will put them at great risk; a book that gives an account of the day to day life of black maids working for white families and based of the direct experience of the protagonists.

The film, which has already been a huge box office hit in the United States, received five nominations for the 2012 Golden Globe 2012, with Octavia Spencer win the award for best actress in a supporting role.

In bookshops from 29 November Ti racconto un sorriso (Mondadori, pp.60, €19) is a book and CD of short stories presented by six famous faces from television which has been put together to contribute to the appeal promoted by Mediafriends (the charity association created by Mediaset, Mondadori and Medusa), which this year is in favour of the Centro Benedetta D’Intino.
The book features seven tales, based on true stories, is illustrated by Paolo D’Altan and read, on the accompanying CD, by voices from R101: Cristiano Militello, Paolo Cavallone and Sara, Marco Balestri, Lester and Paolo Dini, Federico l’Olandese Volante, Chiara Lorenzutti and Alberto Davoli, Tamara Donà and Tamy T.

The first six tales all have a happy ending and are taken from stories of children in difficulty who, in different parts of the world, thanks to the help of the various associations supported by Mediafriends, have managed to regain their smile and the hope of a better life. Only the last story is still waiting to have its happy end.

Also this year, the stories are introduced by six personalities from the world of entertainment who have enthusiastically taken part in this charity effort: Enrico Brignano, Piero Chiambretti, Rita dalla Chiesa, Alessia Marcuzzi, Alfonso Signorini and Silvia Toffanin.

Porceeds from the book will be donated to Mediafriends Onlus which this year is supporting the Centro Benedetta D’Intino, the operating structure of the Fondazione Benedetta D’Intino, founded in 1992 by the Mondadori, D’Intino and Formenton families, in memory of Benedetta, who died at the age of fifteen months due to congenital heart diease.
The Centre works to guarantee a future for children with physical, psychological and social difficulties and operates in two sectors: psycho-therapeutic services, which helps children from birth with emotional problems, and, augmented and alternative communication services, which supports children and adolescents with serious communicative difficulties.
The aim of the Centro Benedetta D’Intino in Milan is also to consolidate in the daily lives of these children the results achieved by the Centre, with specially trained staff who continue to provide families, school mates, teachers and friends with the necessary support. Through its web site, www.mediafriends.itwww.mediafriends.it, Mediafriendswill publish the results of the progress being made and the use of the funds provided by the book.

In the Devoto-Oli Le Monnier dictionary you will find the Italian of Dante and digital natives, the latest jargon of economists and the most colourful expressions in dialect: from papello to green economy and from lungi to pescetariano. An Italian dictionary is a meeting point where all Italians ought to be able to recognise themselves, a place where the specialised terminology of the scientist can live with the neologism of journalists, the slang of youth, the formal language of literary tradition, the dialects of the different regions and loan words imported from around the world.

The Devoto-Oli is the ideal dictionary for all those who want to have an appropriate control over how they express themselves and use the language on a daily basis and who want to stand out without showing themselves up. A tool that, when used as necessary, makes all the difference.

This is the start of the promotional campaign for the 2012 edition of the ground-breaking Le Monnier dictionary.

The claim developed by the Turin-based advertising company INEDITHA is The 2012 Devoto-Oli: you can tell who uses it. The three “subjects” use a number of polished expressions (chiedo venia, calende greche, sollucchero), in contexts that are familiar to everyone, for example a jokey message between colleagues on an iPad during a meeting; a graffiti message on a wall to a girlfriend and a note left on a windscreen with apologies for damage caused (Chiedo venia per aver urtato la sua macchina).

The campaign will run at 125 Mondadori Franchising and Mondadori Retail outlets around the country and is aimed at the end-user with a view to encouraging purchase: to teens, students, families, to those who study, read and work with the language and not only professionals, teachers and intellectuals.

100 Mondadori bookstore franchises and 25 Retail outlets will have totems, double-sided flags, change machines and promo-card at cash desks and the windows of the outlets will be dressed featuring the three subjects. At both networks monitors will show the campaign video and inside the Mondadori Multicenter in Piazza Duomo in Milan, there will be a giant panel with one of the three subjects.

The campaign will also run in the specialised educational press (Tuttoscuola), in la Repubblica newspaper, the magazines of the two bookstore chains involved in the campaign and, with banners (leaderboards and skyscrapers) on the Ibs, Libraccio and Mondadori Education websites.

The 2012 Devoto-Oli
The 2012 edition of the Devoto-Oli Le Monnier dictionary includes 350 new words, 150,000 clear and exhaustive definitions; 40,000 locutions and clearly indicated expressions; 3,240 two-colour pages; constantly updated scientific terminology, with neologisms such as Evo-Devo (evolution of development), cisgenico, psicocorporeo and mineralogramma.

The selection of new words – that provides a clear indication of the evolution of the language, and that includes the expressions of digital natives, the jargon of economists and a range of current expressions – great importance is given to dialects and foreign loan words. Among the 350 new items included in the new edition are those related to ecology, from current affairs and politics, the world of business and finance, the jargon of TV and newspapers, and the world of youth, from new technologies, fashion and new trends, as well as advertising.

The dictionary is available with a multi-platform DVD-Rom (Windows, Mac and Linux) – that can also be used on an Interactive Multimedia Board, which as well as containing the entire up-dated version of the Devoto-Oli, also includes a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms – and with an annual licence for online consultation, that provides access to the dictionary from any computer in any location.

Finally, the mobile version is available from the Apple Store with the App universale of the 2012 Devoto-Oli for the iPhone and iPad.

Mondadori and Amazon today announced an agreement which will make more than 2,000 e-books published by the Mondadori Group available to Kindle customers. Customers across Europe will be able to buy Mondadori books through Kindle stores on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.com.

According to Mondadori, the Mondadori, Einaudi, Sperling&Kupfer and Piemme publishing houses will offer thousands of e-books to Kindle customers in Europe from Kindle Stores. In addition, Mondadori expects to add another 1,000 titles by Christmas for readers to enjoy, including all of the new titles planned by each publishing house in the coming autumn-winter season.

The Mondadori trade catalogue includes more than 10,000 titles, and in addition to many backlist titles all of the Group’s most important new titles have been launched simultaneously in print and digital formats since last January.

“For Mondadori, working with Amazon to make thousands of e-books available to Kindle customers is an important step forward in the Group’s digital development strategy,” Maurizio Costa, deputy chairman and chief executive of Mondadori. “After a year of studies and experimentation, we expect 2012 to show great acceleration of e-book sales in Italy. E-books have tremendous potential in our country and I expect them to be a major part of our business going forward,” Costa continued. “Mondadori aims to play a driving role, making available to readers by 2012 more than 8,000 books in digital format and we are excited to work with Amazon to take this step”.

“One of our top priorities for Kindle is increasing selection for our customers in all languages,” said Greg Greeley, vice president, Amazon EU. “We already offer customers in over 100 countries thousands of foreign language titles. Now, together with Mondadori, we are excited to bring Italian-language titles to Kindle readers in Europe from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.com.”

This year the GEO Mondadori campaign is supporting the collection of funds for FAI – Fondo Ambiente Italiano (the Italian Environmental Fund) – for the project “La Terra di Francesco” which aims to recover and open to the public the wood of Saint Francis of Assisi..
Also, from 15 June to 15 August, it will be possible to buy all the Mondadori guides (Guide Mondadori, Top 10, Scoprire l’Italia, Repertory and City Book) with a 25% discount.

Mondadori, the market leader in travel publishing with a catalogue of 200 titles, has always been engaged in environmental protection. The guides themselves are printed on FSC paper, which means that the paper is responsibly sourced.
With their support for “La Terra di Francesco” the Mondadori guides also confirm an attention for the growing sensitivity of the public about environmental tourism.

The FAI project for Assisi aims to redevelop and recover vegetation in the area to protect the biodiversity of the woodland, as well as restoring the buildings within the area. This zone of 60 hectares of hilly woodland, made up mainly of oak, maple and hornbeam trees as well as olive groves and cultivated fields, could be opened to the public by November 2001. This is the landscape that served as a backdrop to the paintings of Giotto and where we can today also find the land art work Il Terzo Paradiso donated by Michelangelo Pistoletto. It is land that represents the highest model of the communion between man and nature, in line with the teachings and principles of St Francis.

The second edition of “ANTEPRIME – Ti racconto il mio prossimo libro”, an even that offers writers the possibility of presenting their new books directly to the public and organised by the municipality of Pietrasanta, a town of sculptors and artists, along with the publishing houses Einaudi, Electa, Frassinelli, Mondadori, Piemme and Sperling & Kupfer, will be held in Pietrasanta from 10 to 12 June 2011.

At various significant locations around the town – from 6.30 pm until late in the evening – the very full programme will feature a number of both well-established and new Italian and foreign authors.

Last year ANTEPRIME recorded some 15,000 visitors at the 36 encounters organised with authors and this year the programme is even richer, with more than 60 events and on the final evening Ken Follett will take off his bestselling writer’s hat and take to the stage as a musician, playing and singing with his band “Damn Right I Got the Blues”, to entertain the audience in a surprising rock and blues concert.

ANTEPRIME opens to the public the kind of meetings that publishers regularly organise for booksellers to announce and present forthcoming titles. Meetings that are increasingly conducted by the authors themselves and in which they have an opportunity to give an account of the effort and the passion that goes into the creation of a book. On the various stages of Pietrasanta the authors will be accompanied by their editors and will be able to pursue in public the constant dialogue that underpins the relationship between an author and his or her publisher. Some will read extracts from their new books, while others will explain the background or the genesis of their new work. For all of them it will be an opportunity to satisfy a public demand to know more about writers, to answer questions and raise curiosities.

Mondadori and Vodafone Italia are launching the first digital newsstand for tablet devices: an authentic aggregator for digital magazines that will provide access to Italy’s best magazines and, with the Bol.it, to more than 110,000 ebooks.

Two markets with great potential side by side: the media industry, which in Italy, between digital and “physical” is worth around €21 billion (Source: PWC “Entertainment & Media Outlook in Italy) and a sector that is undergoing a profound transformation. At the same time, the mobile telecoms sector, currently worth about €21 billion (Source: Deutsche Bank), has been involved in the rapid spread of the most advanced communication services and devices, creating the conditions for the development of new ways of exploiting a vast array of content.

Mondadori and Vodafone, both market leaders, have combined their efforts to offer their customers and readers the most effective way of accessing paid content. The partnership opens the way to an innovative model in which digital editorial content will be made available on all kinds of device (tablets and smartphones), regardless of the operating system or technology.

With this agreement Mondadori and Vodafone will, from the beginning of June, open a digital newsstand with all of Italy’s leading magazines: from the start it will be possible to download for free, on devices running the Android operating system, six digital editions of Panorama, Panorama Economy and Grazia; other titles will be added from summer the weeklies Chi, Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni, Donna Moderna and Tu Style and the monthlies Cucina Moderna, Casaviva, Panoramauto and Pc Professionale.
And through an application for Bol.it – the Italian online bookstore with over 6 million products including books, CDs, DVDs, games and ebooks, Vodafone clients will also be able to access a catalogue of over 110,000 digital books, available at a 30% discount.

Vodafone Italia, which already since last summer has developed solutions to accompany the world of publishing towards a new business model for paid digital content, aims to be the best possible partner for digital media with its portfolio of products that is a model of excellent service with pre and post sales assistance and advice at all points of contact with the client and a network performance that makes them available always and everywhere.

Mondadori’s Digital area, which was created in September 2010 and is focused on the development of the publishing market through technology, is concentrating on the dual effort of creating new areas of business and the digital distribution of magazines, books and the Group’s other editorial products. In addition to its e-commerce and digital multimedia activities, the Digital area has recently added the development of applications for mobile devices.

“In a world in which cultural consumption is increasing and permeating the physical and digital lives of people, ensuring that access to content is easy and ubiquitous is part of the role of a publisher,” underlined Maurizio Costa, deputy chairman and chief executive of the Mondadori Group. “Increasing the value of what Mondadori can give to its customers/readers is at the heart of our development policies, and we are creating partnerships with telecom operators, device manufacturers and the leading internet brands precisely to ensure that customers can have access and buying opportunities everywhere. In this sense, the agreement with Vodafone is an important stage in the construction of our growth strategy,” Costa concluded.

“This agreement with Mondadori is a key element in our strategy,” stated Paolo Bertoluzzo, chief executive of Vodafone Italia, “because it is based on an open and horizontal model that allows us to offer, regardless of the type of device or operating system, not only digital newspapers, but also the widest range of magazines and ebooks. 2011 is the year of the tablet and the spread of these products will encourage the evolution of the business models of media companies. We want to facilitate this process by providing the best solutions in terms of connectivity, service, assistance and payment systems,” concluded Bertoluzzo.

The magazines available on the digital newsstand can be purchased easily and securely with telephone credit and a click, using one’s telephone number and password.
To make access to the digital newsstand and Bol.it simpler for customers, an application will be pre-installed on tables and available from “Vodafone Apps” where all applications of Vodafone and its partners (magazines, Bol.it, and newspapers) can be downloaded directly onto any device.

At the XXIV International Book Fair in Turin, Bol.it will launch DonaBol – Books donated by the web, a new charitable initiative that will involve the donation by Bol.it of a library to four Italian schools. The aim is to provide the schools with the texts that have had the biggest impact on the lives of readers and net users by sharing their favourite titles with friends, passing on emotions, tastes and opinions that are, in fact, exchanged and give users the sense of being a part of a community and being involved in an important initiative.

Through DonaBol, and along with those taking part, Bol.it will bring a passion for books and reading to others who can enjoy the positive effects of the actions of others. To support the schools and to give everyone the opportunity of helping kids and students become familiar with the books they deem fundamental.

The schools that will benefit from the initiative – among the most need in Milan, Turin, Naples and Palermo – have been selected thanks to the collaboration of the CGM cooperative, Italy’s largest network of social enterprises, operating across the country since 1987, which has more than 10,000 operating units and a staff of 45,000 in the various regions.

To take part in DonaBol all you need to do is visit the Bol.it stand at the Turin Book Fair (from 12 to 16 May 2011, pavilion 2, stand H126-J125) and sign up, or go to the web site www.bol.it where, from 12 May, there will be a dedicated page for Donabol, and indicate the five titles that you consider the most important in your life. When you have completed your list, the user will be invited to indicate the initiative to as many people as possible, sharing the titles on Facebook and Twitter and inviting their friends to take part. Everyone is invited to make their selection of books for DonaBol: the more contributions, the more books will be donated and the more the dream of donating a library to the four schools will become a reality.

The initiative will be launched on 12 May, with the opening of the Turin Book Fair, and will go on until the end of the month. When the collection of titles has been completed, the most selected titles will join those to be donated to the schools and Bol.it will support the head teachers of the selected schools, who will evaluate their suitability with the schools’ syllabus and needs.

Antonio Porro will be the Mondadori Group’s new General Manager Educational from June.
Porro will also be proposed to the respective boards of Mondadori Education and Mondadori Electa for the position of managing director.

Porro, who is from Milan, is 46 and has a degree in economics and business administration. Since January 2009 he has been in charge of Mergers & Acquisitions for the Mondadori Group, reporting directly to the deputy chairman and chief executive, Maurizio Costa.

Porro worked previously at Telecom Italia for a period of more than ten years; since 1995 with responsibilities in the Business Division, where he worked, among other things, on strategic marketing, and, from 2001 at the International Division, where he held a number of positions and focused on support and operations for subsidiaries.
He first worked at Mondadori in the early 1990 when he was responsible for development projects.

The Mondadori Group would like to thank Antonio Baravalle for his precious contribution and the seriousness and competence shown, and wishes him the very best in all his future professional endeavours.