The ice cream palace - Eugenio Ruberto

Read and listen to the fairy tale “The Ice Cream Palace” by Gianni Rodari

Today I will read you “The Ice Cream Palace” by Gianni Rodari, taken from “Telephone Tales“

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 upon a time, in Bologna, they built an ice cream palace right in Piazza Maggiore, and children came from far away to give it a lick.

The roof was made of whipped cream, the smoke from the chimneys of spun sugar, and the chimneys of candied fruit. Everything else was made of ice cream: the doors of ice cream, the walls of ice cream, the furniture of ice cream.

A very small child had attached himself to a table and licked its legs one by one, until the table collapsed onto him with all the plates, and the plates were made of chocolate ice cream, the best kind.

A municipal guard, at a certain point, noticed that a window was melting. The panes were made of strawberry ice cream, and they were dissolving into pink rivulets.

“Hurry up,” shouted the guard, “even faster!”
And down everyone went, licking faster, so as not to let a single drop of that masterpiece go to waste.

“An armchair!” pleaded an old woman, who couldn’t push her way through the crowd, “an armchair for a poor old lady. Who will bring it to me? With armrests, if possible.”

A generous fireman ran to get her an armchair made of cream and pistachio ice cream, and the poor old woman, completely blissful, began to lick it right from the armrests.

It was a great day, and by order of the doctors, no one got a stomach ache.

Even now, when children ask for another ice cream, their parents sigh: “Oh yes, for you we would need a whole palace, like the one in Bologna.”