Crescendo

Susanna Mattiangeli & Felicita Sala

“Yes, that was music, thought Milo, and he could hear it too, but in a different way than other people. But most of all, who would have thought, he could make it grow with his hands and with everything else.”

In Milo’s town, music has withered away: forgotten, neglected, and finally lost. Milo himself has never heard it. Born deaf, he knows music only through other people’s memories: something fragile that once had to be cared for, something that disappeared when no one noticed it fading.

Content in his soundless environment, Milo spends his days collecting objects of all kinds of shapes and drawing them with careful attention. One day, among a pile of discarded things, he discovers something small, bright, and alive. As he tends to it, something begins to grow, something that transforms not only his home, but the entire town.

Crescendo is a poetic and luminous picture book about care, creativity, and the many ways we experience the world.