Cagliari and other municipalities on the island from September 30 to October 6, 2025

Conceived and organized by the Tuttestorie Bookshop for Girls and Boys, and designed in collaboration with writer Bruno Tognolini, the Tuttestorie Festival is aimed at girls and boys aged 0 to 16, with a dedicated learning and educational space for adults. The program features international guests, including writers, illustrators, artists, scientists, atelieristas, and children’s literature experts.

From Cagliari (Exma, Basilica of S. Saturnino, Oratorio S.Lucifero, Libreria Tuttestorie, Mediateca del Mediterraneo, Biancospino Dispensa) the festival will stop in Carbonia (with the classes of the SBIS Library System), in Isili (with the classes of the Sarcidano-Barbagia Library System of Seulo) and in the municipalities of Iglesias, Gonnesa, Sanluri, Quartu Sant’Elena, Selargius and Villanovaforru.

Meetings, workshops, shows, narratives, performances, exhibitions, and special events will be dedicated to the theme of INVENTORY in 2025. It will be an opportunity to retrace and creatively reinterpret the themes that have run through twenty years of the Festival (Questions, Disobedience, Beasts, Change, Night, Secret, Incomprehensible, Home, Surprise, Extra, Courage, Bonds, Desires, Earth, Body, Journey, Time, Families, End) and, at the same time, to look to the present and the future. It will be a game of cataloging, reorganizing, remembering, thinking, moving, and connecting what has been achieved in 20 years. And therefore also an invention of what we would like Tuttestorie to be in the years to come. But it will also be an inventory of the world, with a look at what is there and around us, avoiding self-celebratory sentiment. And always in complicity with the great festival community, made up of the children, families, school groups, teachers, librarians with whom we have traveled for years, but also publishers, partners, institutions and of course authors, artists of various arts, illustration first and foremost.

SURDOUGH STARTER

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson’s daughter asked, “Dad, why do things always end up in disarray?” People take care to tidy things up, she noted, but no one takes care to disarray them. True, but then what is it that disarrays them? 1) The winds of Chaos? 2) Entropy? 3) Change? 4) Life, which, because it’s alive, moves and shifts things? The fact is, they end up in disarray, and nothing can be found. And what do we do? Let’s assume that 1) for hours you need a timetable, 2) for years you need a yearbook, 3) for lamps a chandelier; 4) to find you need a troubadour. Which in Latin is “inventory.”

Inventories put things in order. And this, it seems, makes us feel good, or at least a little better. But why? 1) Because we know how many things there are, and which ones, and where—a knowledge that has been useful for many reasons for countless ages. 2) Because we have more space in our heads: clutter, psychologists say, even if we don’t see it, creates a “mental noise” that apparently distracts us. 3) Because we ourselves are orderly: we are organisms with central symmetry, two eyes, two hands, two feet, something in the center, everything neatly placed in its place.

Be that as it may, it seems that taking inventories, counting, and tidying up makes you feel good. Many girls, boys, and even adults, count everything: 1) the steps they take (perhaps stepping on the edges of shadows); 2) the chairs in a room; 3) the things they have to do—a nice real-time inventory with checkmarks: dog fed, undressed, teeth done, goodnight done…

Books are also inventories, in at least three ways. 1) ALL BOOKS ARE A KIND OF INVENTORIES. Especially a) stories, because in their network of lines and words they keep things neatly in order: inside, those that serve the story, neatly arranged in the plot; outside, everything else. But b) poems also organize, as can be seen in the Festival’s Rima Inventaria.

2) SOME BOOKS ARE REAL INVENTORIES. a) Those that line up and explain animals, plants, rocks, people, things, and places. And then b) alphabet books, which put the world in alphabetical order, a nice inventory of sounds itself. 3) SOME BOOKS CONTAIN INVENTORIES. Like a) “The BFG,” where the giant collects dreams with a net and puts them in lined-up jars. Or b) “Harry Potter,” with the inventory of things to buy for Hogwarts: 1 magic wand, 1 cauldron, 1 set of glass or crystal test tubes, 1 telescope, 1 brass scale, 1 owl, or 1 cat, or 1 toad…

Then there are also playful inventories, which pretend to tidy up but instead cause disorder, like certain little girls and boys, lining up things that don’t belong, or aren’t there, or don’t even exist. Like the bizarre inventory written by Borges that says: “Animals are divided into: a) belonging to the Emperor, b) stuffed, c) trained, d) piglets, e) mermaids, f) fabulous, g) stray dogs, h) included in the present classification, i) that are agitated like madmen, j) innumerable, k) drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush, l) etc., m) that have broken the vase, n) that from a distance look like flies…”

What does that wise old poet want to tell us? That there’s little need for inventory: everything will always be in order and nothing will be in order. A fine Sisyphean task. Like our Festival Inventory of Twenty Years of Festivals. We’re trying to put things in order, each in its own drawer: but twenty years of words, images, thoughts, inventions, songs and actions and books and books and books, are slipping away in all directions. We’ll never make it. Neither talking about the Inventory at this Festival, nor making an Inventory of all Festivals. But like children on Poetto beach, there building castles that the waves wash away, we try again and again. Come on, courage, from the beginning: “2006 Questions, 2007 Disobediences, 2008 Animals, 2009 Changes…”