The Hundred Languages of Children

by Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini & George Forman (eds.)

They sold a Nazi tank to build a school. It changed everything.

$55 MSRP
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After WWII the women of Reggio Emilia, a small city in northern Italy, sold a tank, a few trucks, and some horses left behind by the retreating German army and used the money to build a school. They wanted something completely different from the fascist education their children had just lived through — a school built on democratic participation, on the belief that children are competent and curious and rights-bearing from birth, on the idea that young children have not one language but a hundred: painting, clay, wire, movement, music, shadow, light, drama, conversation, silence. The Reggio Emilia approach they built became one of the most influential early childhood education philosophies in the world. This anthology — essays, documentation, photographs, children's work — is the definitive account of what that philosophy looks like in practice. If someone asks what DoCR is trying to build, this book is the answer with photographs. Every child who passes through a Reggio-inspired program learns that their way of knowing the world is valid, that their hundred languages are worth speaking, that the adults around them are genuinely curious about what they think. That is the DoCR promise. Reggio has been keeping it since 1945.

Same event, different angle

The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.

In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia

Carlina Rinaldi

The woman who carried Reggio forward. In her own words.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

Same pattern, different era

Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.

In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia

Carlina Rinaldi

The woman who carried Reggio forward. In her own words.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST