Dr. Tarak Kapoor cannot sleep. He has just taken a job as a telemedicine doctor in Texas. Garnet is two days and five airports away from his home in Mumbai. Tarak is so tired, but his body thinks it's lunchtime in India. By 2:30 a.m. he is wandering the empty streets. To his surprise, he finds a brightly lit pay telephone next to a set of broken traffic lights. Even though it's the middle of the night, people drive up one by one and make calls. Why on earth are they here at this hour? Who are they calling? The mystery deepens when Tarak retraces his steps the next day. All he finds is an empty lot covered with dirt and trash. Perhaps he has made a mistake. His jet lag is pretty bad. But when he returns that night, the phone booth is back in its spot, glowing brightly. Tarak picks up his courage when an old man stops his car to make a call. Tarak questions him about the phone. The man asks, "Is there someone you want to call?" and drives away into the empty night. As Tarak looks at the phone, it begins to ring. Will he answer the night telephone?

Reminiscent of Scheherazade and One Thousand and One Nights, Gianni Rodari's Telephone Tales is many stories within a story. Every night, a traveling father must finish a bedtime story in the time that a single coin will buy. One night, it's a carousel that adults cannot comprehend, but whose operator must be some sort of magician, the next, it's a land filled with butter men who melt in the sunshine Awarded the Hans Christian Anderson Award in 1970, Gianni Rodari is widely considered to be Italy's most important children's author of the 20th century. Newly re-illustrated by Italian artist Valerio Vidali​ (The Forest)​, Telephone Tales​ entertains, while questioning and imagining other worlds.