English 
Italiano 
In the afternoon of the 26th January in Borgotaro there are both, sun and snow. Right in the historical centre, the comfortable Biblioteca Manara hosts a new presentation of the slow book “Sun and snow”, in a crowded small room where no one is missing. In fact besides a certainly curious audience there are mayor, deputy mayor, culture charged council member and chairman of Fondazione Manara.
The host of this event is Borgotaro mayor, who highlights how eBook, eReader and tablets have changed our way to approach to culture. Without a doubt they are valid tools but lacking of the precious sensory experiences – tactile, visual, olfactory, and, why not, auditory – relative to paper. Then, introduced by Massimo Beccarelli, Luigi Alfieri and Enrico Robusti harmonically alternate each other in the interventions as only the old friends can do, talking about the birth of the book from two different points of view. Reading some passages originates the opinions about the text: the description of the stars seen with the eyes of a child makes the author say, “If life is a mystery, in those fifteen lines there is everything. Life is a quest that starts in the childhood… some questions suddenly arise, from nowhere, and then we continue to think about them for the whole life”, while the lines about the Morbello school cause memories about the emotion of learning. “Borgotaro brings me good luck”, says Alfieri telling an anecdote and reminding of his book about migrant workers, “and after all I have many friends here”.
Enrico Robusti, recommended by Vittorio Sgarbi as the best 2012 painter, tells how he creates sketches on straw paper since many years, in this case chosen – as a happy coincidence – to recall an epoch. For the illustrations of “Sun and snow” he opted for pastel, particular technique that can give very high results, and a dry, nervous, expressionist stroke that dig in the souls of the characters. The drawings are twelve, one for every month, but only in a few cases the season is identified precisely; as innovation,for the first time he made choral drawings. Well-refinished in the minimal details, the result has been excellent, the printed drawings seem like the original ones. What is the best aspect of working with an old classmate? “I didn’t need to ask how to draw anything, I already knew”.
“Sun and snow” has even a precise mission: remembering to nowadays mankind the values of the rural culture. The twelve months of the year have been narrated with precision just to remember to the reader the succession of seasons with their changes, to recover an almost lost conscience that man is made to live inside nature.
A book-object for collectors produced in Parma, “Sun and snow” gives a meaning to our culture and portrays it. Fermoeditore has been able to create a design, handcrafted, tasteful and high quality work, conceived even for foreign countries thank to the double language text in Italian and English. The book, already presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair, is waiting to even fly to Russia and USA.
With a wish for a long life to paper books, the meeting ended in the best way: a dinner with excellent local mushrooms.
