Ethics and aesthetics in children’s literature

Abstract

In the present context of a society which is more and more set to globalisation, side by side to actual integration and multicultural acknowledgment efforts, symbolic cleavages that sometimes occur seem to point out to a dissociation between universal values and values guided by man’s certain monolithic and one-dimensional visions. So, it becomes of real importance to question ourselves about the role of children’s literature under the scope of an educational project. Therefore, we plan to register gestures, practices and some of the places, by means of which, literature, from its inner humanistic standpoint, actively contributes to an explicit recognition of alterity and this dimension’s role in an extremely multicultural society. In order to do so, we shall proceed to the analyses of some contemporary children’s literature productions, focusing particularly on texts from Luísa Dacosta ( O elefante cor de rosa), José Jorge Letria (O homem que tinha uma árvore na cabeça; Mouschi, o gato de Anne Frank) and Luís Sepúlveda (História de uma gaivota e do gato que a ensinou a voar).