Historias de papel
Un libro para Jacinta
[Paper Stories
A book for Jacinta]
Year 2023
Spanish edition
Text and illustrations by Josefina Ricotta
Design: Pablo Alarcón and Alberto Scotti
This book was produced using OpenDislexic, a typeface that aims to increase readability for readers with dyslexia.
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Colección Inquieta
136 pages
Format: 21x15cm
ISBN 978-987-1358-90-8
that is made for young and old alike. It is also the first title the museum has designed in connection to our institutional mission of accessibility and inclusion, and it allows us to discover how art can heal and transform our lives as well as our future.
The design of the publication seeks to maintain the same original aesthetic as the other four stories that the young author Josefina Ricotta wrote and illustrated by hand in a notebook she later gave to her niece, Jacinta. With her imagination and originality, Ricotta’s prose recalls authors such as María Elena Walsh or Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Her texts take us on a journey through distant yet familiar lands and bring us characters in situations that are both full of fantasy and of the magic of everyday life.
“Why put so much effort into a storybook? Because there is no better gift that I can give my goddaughter than to give her her first stories (…). I want to set an example that teaches her that no matter how big the storm, there is always a place to shelter and, in this particular case, I offer her my own shelter: literature. (…) In these pages I wanted to teach her that a person who is blind can work as a forest ranger; that the best medicine can be the voice of a friend; that sweets are better when shared; that we can control our anger if we learn to recognise and communicate our emotions; and, above all, that even when faced with adversity in life, we will always find someone to help us through it.”
Josefina Ricotta
Josefina Ricotta was born in 1992 in San Miguel del Monte (Buenos Aires Province). She holds a degree in Educational Psychology and is a specialist in Clinical Neuropsychology. During her university studies, she audited several seminars in the Arts, including Argentinian and Latin American Literature, Story Analysis, Dramaturgy, Cinema and Psychoanalysis and Literature and Psychoanalysis. She has collaborated on an anthology of stories and has worked as a proofreader on several occasions. She currently serves as the academic director of Mindfulness Argentina.
Josefina has BPD (borderline personality disorder). She says, “Without the support of my parents and siblings I would never have been able to stabilise my disorder to the degree that I have achieved. (…) Being aware that BPD is a lifelong disorder, I had to find resources to anchor me in the present during my times of crisis. For me, literature is that warm, comfortable place to which I can always return.
