bruno munari: prebooks

(i prelibri)

The Prebooks, a cult nowadays, are a series composed by twelve small books ideally dedicated to very young children who have not yet learned how to read or to write. These twelve little books (10 cm x 10 cm) are designed to fit into small hands and are assembled using many different and unusual colours, bindings and materials. They offer a variety of stimuli, sensations and emotions, born from perceptions and images. From Munari: 'they should give the sensation that books are indeed objects made like this and that they contain a wide array of surprises. Culture comes out of surprises, which are things that were unknown before'.

Once again Munari is ahead of his time: while computers are entering more and more deeply into young children’s lives this project helps them to smell, touch, watch and even taste the objects they have around them so that they do not lose contact, literally, with the concreteness of reality.

first published in 1980
books of cardback, of cloth, of flisellina, of hardback, of paper, of transparent plastic, of wettex and of wood, all with a different binding
packed together in a boxed library
English

printed and bound in Mantova, Italy