Orani

My Family's Village

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday 

hosted today by Wrapped in Foil

Frances Foster Books (Farrar Straus Giroux)

(pub. 7.19.2011)  40 pages 

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor and illustrator: Claire Nivola
  
C haracter: Claire Nivola and Orani, her childhood village

 

O verview from the jacket flap: 

        "As a child, Claire Nivola loved visiting Orani, a tiny village nestled among the mountains of central Sardinia in the heart of the Mediterranean.  It was there that her father had been born, one of ten children in a family so poor that he had to share a bed with five of his siblings. And it was there, when Claire returned with him years later, that she learned about life and death, about the ways of nature and of the human family..."

 

T antalizing taste:

       "More cousins appeared and we scattered like birds. Our sandals clattering on the paving stones, we flew along the alleys - up to the right, down sharply to the left, out into the blazing brightness of a piazza." 

and something more:
I savored Claire Nivola's description of her village in the Author's Note in Orani My Father's Village: "Orani was a complete world and just the right scale for a child. Everything happened there - all the tragedies and joys - but they happened in a contained place, among family and neighbors, where everyone knew and cared so that as a child I could comprehend and feel that each part fit into life's whole.  It was there that I saw where the things I ate came from - the tree, the plant, the animal - and how each food was made by the work of someone's hands. In Orani, I felt at the literal source of everything, and how thrilling that was!"  And her wonderful detailed illustrations convey this sense of connection.