Grazia Gotti has spent her life among books. She was one of the founders of the historic Giannino Stoppani bookshop in Bologna and in 2003, again in the Emilian capital, she created the Drosselmeier Academy, a school to become booksellers and booksellers. Many young people who today manage bookstores around Italy have thus been trained in one of the professions that most contribute to the cultural growth of the country thanks to Grazia Gotti.

And how much Grazia Gotti can tell us about books and the universe that revolves around them emerges clearly when reading "Alla letter L" (Bompiani, 2022, pp. 288, also e-book) in which the author tells a lot about herself and own work. And it does so with an alphabet that is useful for deciphering the world of books with open and curious eyes. For each letter Grazia Gotti provides us with a suggestion, a memory, the memory of an encounter with a person or with a book. For each letter we find titles, authors, reading suggestions and some indications on what to avoid because Grazia Gotti has the gift of speaking clearly and not giving in to molasses and the general "volemose bene" that now accompanies the publishing world. A world where every criticism, even the most polite and well exposed, is now banned or considered treason.

Instead, in Grazia Gotti's book - from the A of America to the Z of zero - we are not afraid of words… and how could it be otherwise given that we are talking about books . Thus, letter after letter of the alphabet, the stories read intertwine with those of people, authors, booksellers, publishers, designers met by the author on a journey that is still in progress, but which has lasted for decades in search of answers to a great question: " How do you make the publishing market, and therefore the culture of a country, grow ?" Starting with children and books designed for them, Grazia Gotti seems to suggest us.

But is this really the case? We asked him:

“My speech does not apply to all books produced for boys and girls. I was referring to the classics for the youngest… to Rodari, to the stories of the baby elephant Babar written by Jean De Brunhoff. My reflection starts from my experience with books and from what I read to my son when he was little. I remember listening to the story of Ulysses or his father reading Pinocchio to him. Once I read him a book that was popular at the time and he said it bored him. He wanted another tale like that of Pinocchio. Fortunately, I had recently found a fairy tale by Luigi Capuana, Tiritituf! On a stall. It worked well because it was a crooked, bizarre, strange story like that of Collodi's masterpiece ”.