Piccoli lettori del Novecento. I bambini di Paola Carrara Lombroso sui giornali per ragazzi

The beginning of the XXth Century has been called the Golden age in the reading’s development in Italy. In those years the magazines for young people were a new “virtual community” where the editors and the editors in chief were in dialogue with the young readers of the middle and high classes. The children wrote in the correspondence columns and they told about their daily life. In the paper “Corriere dei Piccoli” the correspondence column was edited by Paola Carrara Lombroso (alias Zia Mariù) who during the 1909 promoted the initiative called “Le Bibliotechine rurali” [The rural little libraries] to develop reading in the rural schools. The rich children collected interesting books with their work. In fact they pictured and sold postcards and with the money bought novels to the poor children.This experience developed between 1909 and 1954 and was important because shows us the children in their growing up development as readers during the 20th Century. Then we meet them as intellectual and politic adults in the society between Fascism and Republic