Ode to an Onion: Pablo Neruda & His Muse

Alexandria Giardinoand Felicita Sala’s poetic, beautifully illustrated picture book is inspired by Ode to the Onion by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Pablo has a lunch date with his friend Matilde, who shows the moody poet her garden. Where Pablo sees conflict and sadness, Matilde sees love and hope.

The story is less a biography of Neruda and his muse, Matilde Urrutia (1912-1985), and more a simple ode to a vegetable that is humble and luminous, dark and light, gloomy and glad, full of grief and full of joy--just like life.

＂Children who love words should warm to Alexandria Giardino’s Ode to an Onion: Pablo Neruda & His Muse . . . In Felicita Sala’s vivacious and beautifully detailed drawings, done in colored pencil, Mathilde’s smile and Pablo’s glum expression give a tender humor to this real-life relationship.＂ --New York Times

＂Gloomy versus hopeful. Therein lies the timeless tension between Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda and his wife-to-be in this lovingly envisioned and supremely handsome book.＂ --San Francisco Chronicle

Alexandria Giardino is a writer and translator. Her work includes translating My Life with Pablo Neruda by Matilde Urrutia and her essays have appeared in the Village Voice Literary Supplement, Marie Claire, Discover, American Poetry Review, and on air at KQED. Giardino lives with her family in Northern California. Ode to an Onion is her first children’s book. Felicita Sala is the illustrator of several picture books. Sala lives in Rome with her family.