2025 Winner

We are pleased to announce the winner of the seventh edition of the Premio Carla Poesio (Carla Poesio Award), the recognition aimed at rewarding the best Italian theses in children's literature.

Among the 14 theses submitted by universities across Italy, the jury selected a shortlist of five finalists, listed here in alphabetical order:

• Maddalena Capra, Libri che raccontano di libri. Quando un libro diventa un personaggio. (Books That Tell Stories About Books. When a Book Becomes a Character.) – Milano-Bicocca
• Chiara Folador, Teoria e prassi delle riduzioni dei classici per l'infanzia. Il caso dei Promessi Sposi. (Theory and Practice of Classic Adaptations for Children. The Case of The Betrothed) – Milano-Cattolica
• Matteo Maculotti, Frontiere invisibili. Il tema del viaggio fantastico nelle fiabe e nei racconti per l'infanzia giapponese. (Invisible Frontiers. The Theme of Fantastic Journeys in Japanese Fairy Tales and Children's Stories.) – Milano-Cattolica
• Giulia Piselli, Oltre la soglia. Simboli e mito dell'attraversamento come immagine della Trasformazione. (Beyond the Threshold. Symbols and the Myth of Crossing as an Image of Transformation.) – Bologna
• Alessia Spera, Le bugie hanno le calze lunghe. Il trickster e la letteratura per l'infanzia. (Lies Have Long Stockings. The Trickster and Children's Literature.) – Bologna

The winner is Giulia Piselli with Oltre la soglia. Simboli e mito dell'attraversamento come immagine della Trasformazione (Beyond the Threshold. Symbols and the Myth of Crossing as an Image of Transformation) – Corso di Illustrazione per l'Editoria (Illustration for Publishing Course), Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna.

Jury Statement:

"In her thesis in Illustration for Publishing, titled Oltre la soglia. Simboli e mito dell'attraversamento come immagine della Trasformazione (Beyond the Threshold. Symbols and the Myth of Crossing as an Image of Transformation), discussed at the Department of Applied Arts, Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, in the academic year 2022-2023, Giulia Piselli explores the symbol of the door in the tradition of children's and young adult literature.

Perceived as a passage from one place to another, from one age to the next, and from one existential condition to another, crossing the threshold—from ancient myths to contemporary narratives, both in literary and visual form—ultimately represents a metaphor for existence itself, its moments of growth and transformation.

Giulia Piselli’s work investigates, with passionate yet essential interpretative strength, a fundamental theme in our cultural imagination, offering readers keys to interpretation and analytical pathways that lead to a clear ontology of this place/non-place, eternally suspended between inside and outside, before and after, certainty and the unknown, life and death."

Giulia Piselli’s thesis will be published by Edizioni ETS in 2026, thanks to the support of BolognaFiere.