Second issue of our PiNO collection about science and nature. Vagabonde!, by gardener and landscape architect Marianna Merisi, is a passionate journey into the world of the most common, but most interesting, plants: those that bravely grow and flourish even where we would never expect. We’ll be taught their extraordinary behaviour and how to look, discover, understand these living organisms, that remind us the intelligence and beauty of nature. [Text in Italian]

In all big cities, at dawn, millions of people wake up, have breakfast and get ready for work. The crocodile hero of this book is no exception. We follow him in his household stuff and outside. We walk by his side in the street, we get on the tube, look at shops’ windows, smell sweets and roasted chicken until… A compelling wordless story by Giovanna Zoboli, with illustrations by the extraordinary talented Mariachiara Di Giorgio. [Text in Italian]

It’s nighttime, mom and dad are gone. A little girl is at home, alone with her cat, and she can hear a storm coming. Her room is pitch dark. The cat gets closer and they listen to the wind in silence. Speaking to the cat, she grows braver. But when rain and thunders start banging on the roof, she wishes she was stronger. And suddenly the cat gets bigger and bigger until it turns into a majestic lion.

In any little thing, although unnoticed, there’s a secret life made of mysterious happenings, unknown languages and whispered stories. There are firefly-like lamps, flower-like umbrellas, watches with a heart of minutes, children made of sweet snow, sleepy books and more. The dreamy beauty of Spanish poet María José Ferrada’s verses shines through Gaia Stella’s bright illustrations. [Text in Italian]

Extraordinary things can happen even in the life of a little caterpillar. One morning while he’s busy at his usual stuff, he finds a mysterious being who tells him a new, appealing word. He can’t stop thinking about it since then, and goes around enquiring all the animals in the forest. However, answer after answer, things get even more blurry. Just when the caterpillar thinks he won’t find no peace anymore, something happens in the night sky… [Text in Italian]

A song for solo child voice. A love song which leads you, page after page, through fields and tropical forests, oceans, moonlit nights, milky ways, forests and beaches. A tribute to the perfection of animals through the loving care of a child who passionately desires to possess their extraordinary abilities. In this book, beauty is never named, but everything suggests that the child, whose voice accompanies us from page to page, is completely seduced by it. This is a prayer-book, in its own special way: a prayer to remind us that our thoughts may be secular, but nature may not.