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Maps and Mapping in Children's Literature: Landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes
Edited by Nina Goga and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 7] 2017
► pp. 147–163

Chapter 8
Bruno Munari’s visual mapping of the city of Milan

A historical analysis of the picturebook Nella nebbia di Milano

Bruno Munari was one of the most pioneering and ingenious thinkers of the twentieth century. Pablo Picasso called him “the new Leonardo” and Pierre Restany “the Leonardo and the Peter Pan of Italian design.” During his long career as an artist and a designer, Bruno Munari achieved a special bond with the infant universe. He explored the area of visual narration in children’s literature with sublime results. Munari’s witty picturebooks pay special attention to young readers’ capacity to organize and orientate their reading experience by means of visible and invisible details. This chapter examines the picturebook Nella nebbia di Milano (The Circus in the Mist, 1968). The aim of the chapter is to provide an overview of Munari’s original approach and of his capacity to visualize and map places in children’s everyday lives.

Article outline
  • Bruno Munari and the futuristic heritage
  • Munari’s innovative children’s books
  • The structure of the picturebook The Circus in the Mist
  • Munari’s visual mapping of the city of Milan
  • Engendering new aesthetic dimensions
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.7.09cam
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