Member of the PCI (Italian Communist Party) from 1944 to his death.
He received "The biennial award" by the' International Board on Books for Young People' which is the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books.
On 23 October 2020 Google celebrated his 100th birthday with a Google Doodle.
He is considered as Italy's most important 20th-century children's author and his books have been translated into many languages, though few have been published in English.
In 1939, for a short time, Rodari attended the Catholic University of Milan.
In 1952, he travelled for the first time to the Soviet Union, which he frequented thereafter.
For his lasting contribution as a children's author he received the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1970.
He had an interest in music (three years of violin lessons) and literature (discovered the works of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Lenin and Trotsky which sharpened his critical sense).
After three years at the seminary in Seveso, Rodari received his teacher's diploma at the age of seventeen and began to teach elementary classes in rural schools of the Varese district.
Rodari was an Italian writer and journalist, most famous for his works of children's literature, notably Il romanzo di Cipollino.