Reading time: 4 minutes

Read and listen: the Cesenatico carousel

Content index

Summary

Hello friends and dear friends from your Francesca Ruberto

Today I read you this fairy tale from the book "Fairy tales on the phone" by Gianni Rodari

Giovanni Francesco Rodari, detto Gianni[1] (pronuncia Rodàri, /roˈdari/; Omegna, 23 ottobre 1920 – Roma, 14 aprile 1980), è stato uno scrittore, pedagogista, giornalista e poeta italiano. È l’unico scrittore italiano ad aver vinto il Premio Hans Christian Andersen (1970). (leggi ancora)

Let's read together

Once in Cesenatico, by the sea, a carousel happened. In all, he had six wooden horses and six faded red jeeps for children of more modern tastes.

The little man who was pushing her with his arms was small, thin, dark, and had the face of someone who eats every other day. In short, she was certainly not a great carousel, but to the children she must have seemed made of chocolate, because they always stood around her in admiration and threw a tantrum to get on it.

“What will this carousel have, honey?” the mothers said. And they suggested to the children: "Let's go see the dolphins in the canal, let's go and sit in that café with the rocking sofas".
Nothing: the children wanted the carousel.

One evening an old gentleman, after putting his nephew in a jeep, also got on the carousel and mounted a wooden horse. He was uncomfortable there, because he had long legs and his feet touched the ground, he laughed.

But as soon as the little man started to spin the carousel, what a marvel: in an instant the old gentleman found himself at the height of the Cesenatico skyscraper, and his little horse was galloping in the air, pointing his nose straight at the clouds. He looked down and saw all of Romagna, and then all of Italy, and then the whole earth receding under the horse's hooves and soon it too was a little blue carousel that went round and round, showing one after the other the continents and oceans, drawn as if on a map.

“Where shall we go?” asks the old gentleman. At that moment his little nephew passed in front of him, at the wheel of the old faded red jeep, transformed into a spacecraft. And behind him, in line, all the other children, calm and secure in their orbit like so many artificial satellites.

Who knows where the little man on the carousel was now; but he still felt the record playing a bad cha-cha-cha: each ride of the carousel lasted a whole record.
"Then there was a trick," said the old gentleman.
"That little man must be a sorcerer."

And he also thought: "If in the time of one disc we go around the world, we will beat Gagarin's record".
Now the space caravan flies over the Pacific Ocean with all its islets, Australia with its kangaroos leaping, the South Pole, where millions of penguins stood with their noses in the air.

But there wasn't time to count them: in their place the American Indians were already making smoke signals, and here were the skyscrapers of New York, and here was just one skyscraper, and it was that of Cesenatico.

The record was finished. The old gentleman looked around, astonished: he was back on the old, peaceful carousel by the Adriatic, the dark, thin little man was braking it gently, without jolts.

The old gentleman staggered downstairs.
“Listen, you,” he said to the little man. But he didn't have time to listen to him, other children had occupied the horses and jeeps, the carousel was starting again for another round-the-world tour.
"Tell me," repeated the old gentleman, a little peevish.

The little man didn't even look at him. He was pushing the merry-go-round, you could see the happy faces of the children going around looking for those of their parents, standing in a circle, all with an encouraging smile on their lips.

A sorcerer that two-bit little man? A magic carousel that funny rickety car to the sound of a bad cha-cha-cha.

“Come on,” concluded the old man, “it's better that you don't tell anyone about it. Maybe they'd laugh at my back and say: Don't you know that at his age it's dangerous to ride a carousel, why do you get dizzy?"