★WINNER OF THE STREGA RAGAZZE E RAGAZZI PRIZE 2022!
★NADIA TERRANOVA’S POETIC PROSE AND MARA CERRI’S IMAGINATIVE ILLUSTRATIONS INTERTWINE TO CREATE A STORY SUSPENDED BETWEEN DREAM AND REALITY.
★The courage to face life with courage and a touch of magic. Surviving pain by entrusting ‘broken kisses’ to the earth, because carrying them in the heart is too painful.

Adele is 11 years old, is an orphan and lives with her grandmother that she adores. “Broken kisses’ are not to be carried in the heart. You have to take them off, put them in a jar and close it tightly”. This is the advice her grandmother whispers to Adele to help her tolerate the small daily unhappinesses. But Adele also has a big secret that makes her suffer and this trick does not work. So Grandma advises her to go to the garden, dig a hole and tell that secret to the earth. And while Adele is sowing her secret, the whole hill seems to be listening: the beautiful night sky opens up, the moon shines. An underground world is born there: a boy her age and strange creatures come to life, sometimes real, sometimes ghostly, ready to help Adele on her journey into the world.

NADIA TERRANOVA is an author of books translated worldwide, including Addio fantasmi (Einaudi, finalist for the Premio Strega 2019), she has also written many books for children, including: Bruno. The Child Who Learned to Fly (2012), Casca il mondo (2016), Homer has been here (2019) and Aladdin (2020). She collaborates with several newspapers including ‘la Repubblica’, ‘Il Foglio’ and ‘Linkiesta’.

MARA CERRI is considered one of Italy’s most promising artists. She has exhibited her ‘elegant and dreamy’ drawings at the international illustration biennials in Bologna, Bratislava and Lisbon. She collaborates with magazines and newspapers and has published for major Italian children’s books publishers. From her illustrated book Curiel Street 8 (2009) she made, together with Magda Guidi, the animated short film winner of the 2011 Torino Film Festival, short film section.