INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY

Becco di Rame (Copper Beak) is a true story. The story of a goose, Tolosa, that one night, in order to protect the farmyard and the roost, risks her life and loses the upper part of her beak during a fight with a fox. A veterinary, doctor Briganti, has a brilliant intuition and crafts a copper prosthesis that allows Tolosa to keep on living a normal life, despite the acquired disability. The book tells her story, and kids can empathize with the protagonist that, when still an hatchling, was brought to the farm where the whole story takes place. There, she meets the other characters: hens, three old grumpy aunts with a tender heart; two pigs, husband and wife, that become loving foster parents and a stork, a tireless traveller that knows the world, ideal of beauty and freedom. The animal world metaphor helps us dealing with important themes such as diversity, disability and the importance of being welcomed, accepted and wished despite physical differences, or abilities slightly diverse from those we consider “normal”. Our desire is to dedicate this reading activity to all those “ugly ducklings” that, besides an unfair adventure that had led them to a disability, still can find the courage and the strength to fall in love again with their own lives.

( IV B class Pratovecchio Stia)