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“I had long envisioned the core of the story: a country with a Muslim majority and a significant Jewish presence, the interaction between the two communities, and I wanted child<\/span>ren <\/span>as<\/span> main characters,” said Benedetta D\u2019Incau. Known as BeneD\u00ec, D\u2019Incau received the BRAW prize from the Bologna Children\u2019s Book Fair for her work <\/span>Il Racconto della Roccia<\/span><\/em> (The Tale of the Rock), published by Coconino. <\/span><\/p>\n Drawing on her knowledge of Sephardic Judaism, BeneD\u00ec started her research: “I was interested in models of coexistence between two worlds and Jewish communities in the Arab world, which are rarely depicted in comics.”<\/span><\/p>\n She focused on Yemen, collecting iconographic material with the guidance of a professor from the University of Naples, who introduced her to life in the northern part of that country. <\/span><\/p>\n In villages, there was a degree of osmosis and parity between the two communities, which was rare in the capital. Just before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Europeans began to explore Yemen, documenting and photographing it. The author dedicated six months to historical research, nearly a year to defining the storyboard, and another two years to drawing and inking the panels. <\/span><\/p>\n