Literatura infanto-juvenil e políticas públicas de leitura: um estudo do projeto Literatura em Minha Casa

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze the collections of the “Programa Nacional Biblioteca da Escola” [School Library National Program] (PNBE) in 2001, 2002 and 2003 – years of the project Literatura em Minha Casa [Literature at Home] – with books distributed directly to students, especially the ones to students of the 4 th and 5 th grades of elementary school, a total of one hundred and twenty books. Since it is important to examine what has been chosen as literature of "good quality" in the selection for the government purchases in recent years, we investigate the selection criteria of these years, the editors chosen, the most recurrent authors and illustrators, the most frequent themes, where the stories take place, the ethnic pluralism, cultural elements and images of Brazilian regionalism present in the books chosen for the collections, and finally, the regional aspects of Mato Grosso do Sul found in thebooks purchased by the government and distributed to schools throughout the country. In general, the selection criteria can be summarized into two basic requirements: diversity (of genres, subjects, titles and authors from different periods and regions) and materiality of the work (graphic design and illustrations which take into account the target audience). Data concerning the publishing market, the analysis of the most recurrent authors and illustrators and the physical space where the national stories take place show a predominance of southeast of Brazil in the analyzed books. We also observed that the recurrence of established authors in the collections would form a kind of literary canon in these years. As far as the thematic analysis is concerned, we found that issues related to fantasy are the majority, which converges with the results of the physical space where the stories take place: an undefined place, often fabulous and charming. Besides, we found images of ethnic plurality in seventeen works, cultural elements and images of Brazilian regionalism in eleven books and images of the regional of Mato Grosso do Sul in three anthologies with poems by Manoel de Barros, the poet from Mato Grosso. These results seem to point out difficulties in representing these plural characteristics of our country in children’s literature in the analyzed years.