Literatura para niños

Children’s literature

Since the beginning of the times the human being has looked for forms in how communicating with the others. First it uses hieroglyphics with which it transmits the most important events of its tribe or community. Then, 3000 year before Christ they begin to use the writing but for a long time the written documents are exclusive for the use of the clergy. Some years laterthe non clergy people can write and read freely and is in this time when the flowering of a new literature comes, first in Latin and then in vernacular tongue. These new texts are intended to a public council that has poetry education and free time to read. The love lyric, the courtly romance and the new modality of historic texts express the new complexity of life and the compromise with thesecular world (Latanzzi). It is very important to stand out that the origin of the writing is not the origin of literature. The hieroglyphics do not belong to the ambit of the literature.

This opening gives the opportunity to that infantile literature resurges and thus the children can enjoy so exquisite expression of art what is extremely important in this stage of life because the children’s worldis the world of imagination. Through the literature that they listen or read by themselves they can take out everything what they have within them. Almost always this illimitable imagination exceeds adult’s logic and understanding still in those who have written their books thoughtlessly that they will be the delight of the small ones who has filled them with more brightness and magic. One of themistakes that have been committed is to use the literature chiefly to let some kind of education or moral, denying the opportunity to let their imagination go and throwing away the possibility that the stories might become really significant. It happens when people disguise the original texts of many stories or fairy tails even some of the excellent works of the universal literature. Bettelheim(1978 mentioned in Jiménez, 2001) gives more importance to the children’s circumstances and feelings when they think about their present and their future full of fears and uncertainty but overflowing of hope and faith too. He says that they will find everything in the children’s literature.

According with the Dictionary of the Real Academy we can define literature as the art that uses likeexpression means a language. Also the term is used to define the set of literary productions of a nation, a time or a sort (like Persian literature, for example) and to the work set that treats on an art or a science (sport literature or legal literature, etc.)

It is important to note that children’s literature has specific characteristics as follows:

• It looks for the harmony and balance ofform and content.

• It is the product of creative imagination.

• It has communicative character.

• It is individual and social.

• It uses a wealth of images.

• It is dynamic.

• It is related with the historical and cultural context of its creator.

• It has consistency from beginning to end.

• It is art and recreation.

Children’sliterature has many functions too. One is the scope of socialization showing them that there are other people around him, awakening into them the need to communicate their feelings, and teaching the importance of respecting the others through the awareness of important values that promote interpersonal relationships. Another function is the creative-aesthetic when the child gets the aesthetic taste havingcontact with the creative act that is followed, with the continuous practice, by the development of abilities and skills that will let him react in a positive way to the beauty that surrounds him. This goes hand in hand with the child when almost without realizing it he feels and expresses his inner self in a poetic way and has a special like for the true art. His need to create is evidenced by...