B.auction enter a bookstore to notice that the shelves intended for children’s publishing they are crowded with books for rebellious girls and boys. Books on empowerment (especially women). Books about emotions. Books that claim to teach a moral about important topics dear to adults (such as welcoming the arrival of a little brother, sharing one’s toys, accepting the different).
At a time when the practice of surrounding children with as many books as possible is increasingly widespread, Giorgia Grilli, Professor of Education at the University of Bologna, he tries to send some disruptive messages to parents, grandparents and teachers often overwhelmed by this editorial bulimia.
Let the children read useless books
The first message, illustrated in depth in the essay What are children’s books about. Children’s literature as a radical critique (Donzelli), is this: “The books that we could fully place on the shelf for children’s literature are not those that convey a specific message, but they are the ones that are uselessthose who with their shameless inactivity contain something that goes beyond the concerns, expectations, needs of adults and society ».
The teacher cites titles such as Mary Poppins, In the Land of Wild Monsters, Alice in Wonderland, The Young Holden, Peter Pan, Pippi Longstocking, Little Blue and Little Yellow to show how the stories “that have not stopped saying what they have to say” (to quote Italo Calvino) are precisely those of those who do not travel the marked roads, of those who are not prudent, scrupulous.
Books intended for children’s literature are not those that convey a specific message, but are those that are useless (Photo Getty)
Children are not always candid
But without making rebellion a duty and excellence a prison, are the ones that tell of boys and girls in their own way rebellious, like Little Red Riding Hood, who starts zigzagging through the woods against all maternal indications, or like Gretel who, in the Grimm fairy tale, throws the witch in the oven and frees her brother Hansel.
The second message is even more explosive and concerns the way we understand childhood today. Children of literature, Grilli underlines, “they do not please us: they disturb us, they disturb us, they frighten us“. After all, as the great authors have always known, from Charles Dickens to Roald Dahl, children, even when they get lost among poppies, stars, blades of grass, they are not always candid creatures and sugary as adults love to imagine them. Around them hovers an aura of gloom, melancholy, anger. “Children escape us. This is what the rare adults who actually look at them know. ‘
Children’s literature doesn’t have to help
Showing up to their complexity is a difficult task for those who aspire to write for children. Whoever does it well is Beatrice Alemagnaone of the most important authors and illustrators of children’s books to the world. In his works by him (published in Italy by Topipittori) he proposes a rebellious and elusive sign compared to the simplified and doll-like representations of mainstreaming publishing.
Some of his characters, such as Pasqualina (Manco’s dream bat) could even be considered ugly. “Cuteness has never interested me»Explains Alemagna. “In my eyes the ugly, the deformed, the monster are full of mystery and charm.” Often in some his designs also mix the masculine and feminine. “I believe that children’s literature, precisely because it is aimed at beings under construction, should not have the purpose of teaching. In fact, I think it doesn’t have to help at all. If anything a book is like a journey that stays inside, which enriches and raises some questions. It doesn’t matter if the answer isn’t there. “
In agreement with you Grilli: “The purpose of children’s literature is neither ethical nor purely aestheticto”. If anything, “it is ontologicalin the sense that it invites us to deepen, explore, and remember something that is neglected in everyday life, and which is essential ».
We have to tolerate the unexpected
From this point of view, the choice of themes is decisive. In Goodbye Snow White Alemagna, for example, rewrites the tale of the Brothers Grimm choosing to make his own the voice of the stepmother-witch who, between clumsy expressions and disheveled hair, embodies evil, jealousy without discount. The same happens in the classics as in Pinocchio and Coraline where, together with love, life, pain and sadness find space.
Just as it happens in some books proposed by the LupoGuido publishing house, including Little sleep or Guinefort that bring the little ones closer to the theme of love and death, in practice of life. Grilli highlights: «If today so many books are in fashion that look like an instruction booklet forse is because there is strong adult pressure aimed at illusively vacuuming the little ones with respect to those nuances of feeling that we ourselves struggle to manage ».
Children’s literature also affects non-children
In this sense, he adds Silvia Vecchini, award-winning and multi-translated authorthe most beautiful children’s literature “is not -only- that which is interested in the totality of the human, which intercepts the perturbing side of children, but also that which raises a radical criticism of our habits, to our prejudices, revealing their ambiguity ».
This is why, concludes Grilli, one could say that the children’s literature sometimes tugs even us no longer childrenwe who as parents and educators tolerate the unexpected little and badly, the unknown, we who, in the field of education, punish those who do not know how to stay within the boundaries (of a sheet, of a desk, of a space).
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