September (at least in Italy) is the month when school begins. This is what it means above all for us, who were pupils or have children attending school.
And what is school, if not seeing the dear face of our teacher once again?

Dear teacher…
Who gave me the summer homework that, as usual, I haven’t done.
Dear teacher…
I looked at you, dreaming of becoming like you one day.
Dear teacher…
You don’t know the trouble I had to understand that I am not the dunce you told me I was.

This issue contains a small collection of what the teacher (and school) has left to each one of the illustrators who have participated in the selection.
To begin the year with past memories, with a smile or a heavy heart.
Dear teacher may also be dedicated to all those (dear) teachers and professors that in September must go back to their classes and look at the faces of their (dear) pupils, because holidays end for everybody.
The long summer evenings come to an end, and so do all bathing in the sea or the swimming pool, that warm feeling that deeply unsettles our lives, so that we wish that it is summer for ever and stay out until late in the evening, so that we feel like chatting with friends outdoors, going cycling for hours.
Those hormones that seem to wake up during the summer, maybe because it is hot or maybe urged by
mosquito bites, calm down.
When summer is gone, that dream of freedom that fills us come to an end, even if we don’t go on holiday, even if we have some homework to do or we must study for September exams.

Donna Rosita used to teach in a room on the ground floor of her house. The school was a single room with low tables for little pupils like me, whilst the elder students had desks. Donna Rosita wrote on the blackboard what would become my first vowel: a large “A”. I felt envious of a girl on my table who started to get a nosebleed, and I tried to get the same effect by sticking my new pencil up my nose. But all I got was a smack and a sentence that
would follow me around for years: “What a stupid girl!”.

Special thanks to Bizzarro Bazar that has kindly decided to collaborate with us to improve ILLUSTRATI, allowing us to put his blog on paper.