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Roberto Innocenti was born in 1940 in Bagno a Ripoli, a little village near Florence. During his teens he worked as a workman in the steel industry. Without having studied any university degree, he moved to Rome at the age of 18 and worked there, in an animation studio and as a poster-designer. In 1979 he illustrated his first book, but his actual career as an illustrator for children’s books began when he met Etienne Delessert, a Swiss publisher for whom he illustrated “The Cinderella” (1983) and, above all, his masterpiece, “White Rose”, with a text by Christophe Gallaz (1985). He has illustrated, among others, picture books such as “Pinocchio’s adventures”, “The Nutcracker”, “Erika’s story”…
Roberto Innocenti has been awarded with the Hans Christian Andersen Illustration Award in 2008, thanks to all his work.
He has been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) 2013 and for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2014.
White Rose was the name of a German resistance group in World War II; some of their members were executed by the Nazis. White Rose is, therefore, the symbolic name of a girl who one day decides to follow the trail of a truck full of people, eventually discovering a Nazi concentration camp.
Her constant visits to the camp carrying food to the Jewish children are cut short by a bullet shot by a German soldier, who thinks that “the enemy is everywhere”.
Some of the awards obtained by this book:
-Golden Apple. Bratislava Biennial (Slovakia)
-American Library Association's Mildred L. Batchelder Award (USA)
- Gustav Heinemann Peace Award to children and Young adults’ books (Germany)
-“The top ten books for children” Prize, awarded unanimously by children, librarians and specialists of Banco del Libro (Caracas)
