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After visiting Children's Book Press's new office space Mariuccia felt inspired to spruce up her office space. Mariuccia's office/wharehouse/bookstore was in a wonderful building and had a very functional, clean design. What it lacked was color, warmth and fun. These things bring tremendous energy and good feeling to a work environment.
My friend Mitch came with me to our first meeeting and Mariuccia and her daughter Daria and Mitch and I brainstormed together. We looked at lots of books and chose images to work and play with from the other books. We chose different colors for the walls and asked Antonio Vigil to make wooden cut outs from one of the books and wooden panels to make murals out of some of the other book images. It was a magical process watching it all come together. The 2 main books we used were "como todo lo que nace" by Elizabeth Brami, illustrated by Tom Schamp and "Riurdos de los Animales" by (somehow their name got lost).
This is Mariuccia Iaconi, the photo does not do her justice. She is very elegant and creative in her appearance and gentle and intelligent in her manner. I loved having the opportunity to work with her and her daughters.
The image we painted on the bathroom door is based on a picture from the exquisite children's book "como todo lo que nace" by Elizabeth Brami, illustrated by Tom Schamp (one of my all time favorite children's books). The whale picture is also from that book.
Iaconi books were the first importer and distributor of multicultural children's books starting as a family business in 1955. When I met Mariuccia, she was running the business with her two daughters. I was impressed by her integrity both in how she did business and who she is as a human being. Unfortunately, due to the "Pacman" tendencies of large multi-million dollar book corporations, and the anti-immigrant sentiment in the passage of Proposition 181's banning of bilingual education Mariuccia Iaconi Books was forced to close their business after 52 years of bringing extraordinary books to the United States.
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