The first day of School with the story of GROVIGLIO
(book written and illustrated by Christian Sartirana and Francesca Zanotto)
On the first day of school, the teachers at My School Ticino like to welcome the children with the reading of a book. It is a precious moment to start the school year with a time of sharing and a sense of belonging.
No book is limited to its literary content, which emerges first. There is a second, symbolic plan, which is the most interesting and on which we have built a work that has involved, at different levels, all the children of our school.
The book is about an animated tangle and its evolution. The story opens in a garbage dump, where we meet the tangle, Groviglio. Groviglio is a waste consisting of wires, very small objects and dust, yet he is a small form of life. This is what drives him to go elsewhere and move, to explore the world. He meets on his way first a bee, then a cat, mice, and begins to discover emotions: fear, amusement, excitement, the feeling of security, trust, pleasure, warmth. After various misadventures, he arrives in the city, where he becomes fragmented and begins to lose pieces of himself as he is bumped around in the streets.
Here is the meeting with a little girl. She realises that it is something alive, despite the fact that her father forces her to throw it back on the ground: rubbish cannot be picked up! Groviglio loses other pieces of himself, becomes small and empties out… but there it is: a seed is born! Thus, from tangle he becomes seedling, experiencing the feeling of growing.
This is a story that was very enjoyable, full of symbols and therefore hidden meanings, as often happens in children’s stories. Let’s think of the encounter with a cat, where Groviglio experiences the emotion of fear: here the story is about how when faced with fear we need courage and energy. In the story at that moment of the encounter and only then comes the wind, which helps Groviglio to propel him elsewhere. The wind is the symbol of energy, which leads to movement to get out of the paralysis of fear. Another passage we reflected on is the experience of the sewers, a rather unusual element to find in a children’s fairy tale, but definitely illuminating. In everyone’s personal history there are difficult moments, in which one experiences many emotions, sometimes conflicting with each other. One often believes that there will be no way out. Groviglio only comes out of it with a ‘shot in the arm’: he clings to the last hope, the tail of a mouse that brings him back to the surface. The little girl certainly represents an evolution, she is the first human being after a series of animals, the one who recognises him as alive. This is how recognition works, we exist in the moment that the Other recognises us and from then on we can become aware of ourselves. It is then that transformation occurs and growth begins. A seed is something generative, which can grow if cultivated with constancy. These are to all intents and purposes the ingredients for growing up and also for becoming aware of oneself.
The children, with their teachers in the class, reflected on the wonderful adventure of Groviglio and the meaning and value of the seed. The Seed, essence of the unstoppable transformation that in nature represents the life cycle. Seed as energy in power.
We ended the work and reflections by giving seeds to all the children, to plant and then observe the magic of the growth of a new life, taking care of it.
“I began my work like a farmer who had set aside a good seed of wheat and had been offered a field of fertile land to sow it freely. But it was not so. As soon as I moved the clods of that land I saw gold instead of grain: the soil hid a precious treasure and I was not the farmer I thought I was. Rather, I was like Aladdin who unknowingly had in his hands a key capable of opening hidden treasures”.
(Maria Montessori, Il segreto dell’infanzia, pag.151)
