jueves, 18 de junio de 2009

Going Back To Our Childhood

How many times were you told “Once upon a time....” during your infancy? Most probably more than,or at least, three times.
Literarture dedicated to children has been in used for many years. However, the sense and even the intentonality towards a child has varied notably.

One of the most controversial issues is the fact of elaborating a complete and clear definition of Literature for Children; it will depend on: whether the books are written for children in general, chosen by children as readers or chosen for children by adults such as parents, teachers and specialists. On the whole,this kind of literature will comprise picture books, myths,fables, legends,fairy tales,fantasy fiction,realistic fiction,poetry and verse, nonsense literature,comics,and nursery rhymes in accordance with the age and the developmental cognitive structure of the child.
The development of this way of writing has suffered a large number of changes over time. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance there was a reduced group who could enjoy books, the upper classes. Ocassionally if a child listened to some story by those days, as didactic principles were not fashionable yet, this would be told the same as adults. Just a few books were destinated to the youngest: they focused on learning the alphabet containing sentences that were based on rules of social and religiouos behaviour. In this period, the invention of the printing press contributed the spread of books including the books designed for children.
Once the 17th C & 18th C arrived, a new tendency took place. Pictures were considered as important as written words. The pionner was Comenius in 1658 with his work “Orbis Sensualium Pictus” in which he assocciated a word with a picture. Charles Perrault also became a representative author in this branch dedicated to children, introducing a series of fairy tales in 1697.
Finally, with the arrival of the 19thC, another paradigm began to be taken into account. Now apart from the visual aspect, literary nonsense was arising; its atractiveness was to show imaginary characters (elves, fairies, ghosts and witches) living in a magic world full of bizarre episodes all along the entire story.

This sort of Literature has varied a great deal lately.However it persisted in time and still keeps alive in spite of the changes it suffered. The issue here is not to restict our kids from literature but to promote the interest towards reading from very early ages of life, letting them feel and relive the magic world of literature

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