O que dizem as crianças? Reflexões acerca do trabalho com a literatura infantil desenvolvido em uma escola pública

Abstract

The present research addresses reflections about the use of children's literature in school and aims to investigate the work with children's literature developed in a 1st grade class in a public school in the city of Fortaleza, in the light of children's reports. To do so, the first step was to carry out a bibliographical survey in dialogue with authors (Arroyo, 1968; Lajolo, Zilberman, 1944; Coelho, 2000; Abramovich, 1997; Bettelheim, 1980; Freire, 2009; Soares, 2021; Carvalho, 2001; among others) about the following topics: History of children's literature in the world and in Brazil; public policies to encourage reading in Brazil and in Ceará; school: a meeting place between children and children's literature, and children's literature for children. Thus, the research is exploratory in nature and qualitative in approach, being the research instruments: simple observation, semi-structured interview with the children and interview with the teacher responsible for the class. Eight children were the subjects of the study. The children's answers were categorized into five criteria that were divided into three blocks, as follows: Children's taste for stories; What children consider important and the vision they have about school literary work; stories and the school: who tells them stories and what moments children's literature is worked in the school environment. In addition, we also observed the routine of the children and interviewed the teacher responsible for the class so that, in a complementary manner, it was possible to identify the literary projects worked by the institution. Thus, the research concluded that children like children's stories because of the happy ending, the illustrations, the plot, and the fun that reading literary texts provides. However, they consider that the importance of working with children's literature at school is reduced to making them learn to read, write, and be quiet, showing that literary work at school places greater emphasis on promoting literacy than on literary literacy.