'Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children'

The aim of this essay is to argue on visual aspects related to the world of literature and, in doing so, to dig up an original though nearly unknown piece of work, the Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children, a series of 30 illustrated short stories originally written and illustrated by authors Dave Louapre and Dan Sweetman and published in the U.S. by Piranha Press. The BSFUC provide in fact a good ground both for semiotic and linguistic speculation, but apart from the challenging experience presented by the work of translation – which initially constituted the starting point and the only goal of the research - the true nature of this essay derives indeed from the chance offered by the set of stories to go beyond a simple analysis of a text in terms of linguistic features, and to consider the interaction between communicative codes as a powerful means to widen the spectrum of interpretative and emotional possibilities given to the audience of readers. Along with a first analytical part articulated on four chapters, this book is also provided with an appendix containing a specimen of 11 short stories translated from English into Italian.