La vida de Andersen, sin lugar a dudas, estuvo llena de penurias desde su infancia, aunque muchas especulaciones se han tejido alrededor del hecho de que fue un hijo ilegítimo del rey Christian VIII de Dinamarca. Lo que sí sabemos es que su madre fue una lavandera analfabeta y su padre un zapatero, que se enrola en el ejército napoleónico y muere cuando Andersen tenía 11 años.
A pesar del poco contacto que tuvo con su padre, hay dos herencias fundamentales que recibe de él. Ambas serían decisivas para crear su mundo literario. Una de ellas, casi imperceptible, quedó en su memoria como una semilla dormida. En uno de sus paseos del domingo recuerda que su padre le dijo que todas las cosas: una brizna de paja, un escarabajo y hasta una aguja de zurcir tienen vida propia. ¡Qué impacto tendría este comentario para incubar en la imaginación del pequeño Andersen uno de sus recursos más celebrados! Y es que en sus cuentos muchos objetos (no solo animales) cobran vida, como el soldadito de plomo que se inflama de amor por la agraciada bailarina de papel. El otro legado que le entregó fueron los primeros rudimentos para construir y darle vida a un teatro de juguete, pasión que mantuvo durante su vida adulta y que lo llevó de la ciudad de Odense donde llegó a probar suerte en Teatro Real de Copenhague, la capital de Dinamarca.
Cuando Andersen escribió sus primeros cuentos de hadas, en 1835, ya era un autor consagrado, especialmente por sus novelas, sus poemas y sus guías de viaje. Al principio, la crítica a estos cuentos fue extremadamente desfavorable, incluso se utilizaron adjetivos muy fuertes para referirse a estas historias como dañinas o indelicadas. A pesar de ello, Andersen siguió publicando nuevos cuentos, algunos de origen tradicional y otros creados por él.
Pronto, estas historias, como sus personajes, se impusieron y se hicieron populares entre niños y adultos, en los palacios y en los salones de obreros. La fama del autor lo alcanzó en su madurez; durante sus viajes por distintos países de Europa se movió en círculos palaciegos y mantuvo amistad con otros escritores consagrados, como el inglés Charles Dickens.
En vida, Andersen tuvo una personalidad difícil y extravagante. Algunas de las fobias que lo persiguieron estaban vinculadas con su miedo a la muerte, por eso llevaba consigo una cuerda en caso de que en los hoteles que se alojaba se produjera un incendio y como le aterraba la idea de ser enterrado vivo, durante las noches dejaba una nota al lado de su cama donde escribía “Aunque parezco muerto, no lo estoy”.
Son famosos sus dibujos hechos en papel recortado. Siempre tenía a mano unas largas tijeras, que llevaba cuando era invitado a una cena. Y en medio de una conversación, doblaba un papel y moviendo sus manos con destrezas contra las pinzas de la tijera creaba maravillosos y delicados diseños, como un teatro imaginario que cobraba vida incesantemente.
Detalle de las guardas del libro El teatro de sombras del Sr. Andersen de LuaBooks elaboradas a partir de los recortes de papel originales de Andersen.
Los aportes de Andersen al territorio literario para niños son determinantes, no sólo porque hoy en día clásicos como La Sirenita, El traje nuevo del emperador, El soldadito de plomo, El patito feo y La reina de las nieves... forman parte del imaginario infantil, sino porque asumió en sus relatos la voz de un contador que involucraba a su audiencia. La entrada directa en acción, una moral cuestionable en cuanto al equilibrio entre el bien y el mal, un lenguaje literario con pinceladas poéticas, el uso de onomatopeyas y sonidos celebraron una forma muy personal de escribir, con melancolía, mucho sentido del humor y recursos del absurdo bastante ingeniosos.
La vida del autor encuentra en sus personajes y en sus historias una notable proyección: el rechazo permanente que sufrió durante sus primeros años, el deseo profundo de reconocimiento, sus orígenes humildes, un ideal de amor platónico, sus cambios de carácter, su fervor religioso, su vocación natural por los viajes y una convicción cáustica sobre la condición humana, no tan pura ni tan luminosa.
En la adaptación de Lizardo Carvajal se hace un homenaje al Sr. Andersen, ese hombre poco agraciado pero locuaz, que amaba el arte antiguo de contar historias, que nos dejó a todos los seres humanos un universo inagotable que hemos adoptado como propio. Y en estos cuentos maravillosos, suspendidos en el tiempo, aún podemos encontrar una auténtica forma de mirarnos, como en un espejo, como en un teatro, como en nuestra propia sombra.
Dos de las obras más conocidas de Hans Christian Andersen han sido escogidas para iniciar a los lectores en un mundo de luces y movimiento. Aunque conservan las secuencias más conocidas de los cuentos, imprimen una visión muy personal de cada historia porque colocan el acento en el poder de los niños para sublevarse al poder, privilegian el protagonismo de las niñas y trazan pinceladas de humor que aportan una visión más contemporánea.
Pulgarcita no es una niña que se somete pasivamente a su destino; mientras que la niña que acompaña el desfile del emperador desviste, literalmente, con la verdad lo que los adultos no se atreven a decir.
Si hay algo que resulta valioso en esta edición, es la adaptación al guion teatral, una manera de hacer visible lo esencial del texto narrativo, el uso de acotaciones y el manejo de recursos que seguramente darán al lector muchas pistas para entender cómo funciona el mundo del espectáculo.
Como aportes fundamentales del autor, en las adaptaciones se trazan acercamientos poéticos y reflexivos, que entretejen en estos relatos universales cuestionamientos sobre el influjo de la infancia y el derecho que tienen los niños a configurar su mundo desprovisto de reglas. Y el peligro de la ambición, de la vanidad y de la adulación.
Seguramente con esta experiencia el lector tendrá la oportunidad de hacer brotar la magia en las sombras que proyecta para darles una vida imaginada, pero también encontrará en el lenguaje otro encantamiento: reminiscencias a historias maravillosas y una mirada que les confirma que la infancia es un territorio que tiene su propia lógica, su propio regocijo y su propio poder.
Fanuel Hanán Diaz
Bogotá, marzo de 2019.
How to talk about death with children? When girls and boys have to experience moments of mourning, how should we approach the issue? Should we speak in metaphors or be wildly direct? They were concerns that came to the head of Lizardo Carvajal, a writer and illustrator of children's books, when he had to experience this situation firsthand.
His story began five years ago, when his daughter Lúa was born and soon began to have a close relationship with Cassi, the dog of his maternal grandparents. Lúa and Cassi played like old friends. For her daughter, Cassi was more than a pet; she was his true friend. But Cassi was already 13 years old, she was old and it was difficult for her to walk.
When they received the sad news of the death of Cassi, Lúa's father wondered how to talk about death with the children. Thus, she began to search for children's books about the death of a pet or a loved one. “I didn't find much. And what I found did not convince me personally ”, tells us Lizardo Carvajal, who was looking for a more poetic view of death.
Soon, this Colombian illustrator and writer realized that many people around the world were also looking for ways to talk about death with children; stories that will help them explain and assimilate death to their children, in those moments of great pain. That was how he decided to create Malaika the princess, a 7 minute animated short that you can also buy in its printed version.
It was thus that she began to write and illustrate her own story for children about death. “More than saying how to talk about death with the children, what I wanted was to create a moment of dialogue around the subject. "I think that children also have a lot to tell us about life and about death," says Lizardo, proud of his animated short that can be watch for free on Youtube, and which is now a literary success. Buy Malaika the princess.
That was how she was born Malaika the princess. Lizardo Carvajal's challenge was to write a story that transcends the limits of the religious and the cultural. That he did not explain death to children through the mystical, or with ideas of reincarnation, paradises or life beyond life. The challenge was a book that revealed to us the poetry that death keeps. “If we look for the appropriate and subtle way to talk about death with children, we will be able to talk about a fundamental aspect of life. There is no life without death ”, the author of Malaika the princess.
Malaika She is an African girl, princess of a herd of elephants, who lives on the back of her father Komba. On the long journey to find the drinking fountains, MalaikaYou will understand that memory is the key to elephant survival.
The trip will bring dangerous hunters on the lookout, days of drought and drinking fountains without water; but also a wonderful encounter with the sacred Baobabs, mysterious trees of the savannah, which grow upside down. Difficult days come when Komba begins to sense death. Then Malaika will have to face one of the most difficult tests and a great learning.
Malaika the princess it has been all successful. Today it has more than 150,000 visits on YouTube, it was the winner in 2015 of the Grand Audience Prize of the Toronto Latin American Film Festival and in its printed version, published by the LuaBooks publishing house, it has already sold thousands of copies. Malaika the princess It is without a doubt one of the most beautiful ways to explain death to children and, why not, to adults themselves. A story full of tenderness and fantasy that will take you to the lands of memory.
]]>If you are one of those who thinks that animated shorts for children made in 3D sometimes saturate a bit and you like to return to the essence of the image, we have compiled for you 5 fantastic animated shorts for children made in shadow films that have the magic of say the same (or maybe more) with less.
In a cinematic world saturated with volume, texture and depth; It is always refreshing to approach aesthetic proposals based on the refined elegance and magic that silhouettes bring us. But before seeing the selection of animated shorts for children that we have prepared for you, we want to tell you a little about the history of shadow cinema.
Today the Chinese Shadow Theater is considered a World Heritage Site by Unesco. But possibly the first projections of the shadow theater of humanity will have been those shadows that our ancestors projected in the caves they inhabited, as Plato suggests in The Myth of the Cave. It was simple, you only needed a bonfire, the night and your hands to tell ancestral stories with shadows.
They also say that Emperor Wu-Ti had lost his beloved Wang. The emperor was mired in complete sadness and no one was able to give him back the zest for life. And legend has it that Sha-Wong placed the Emperor in front of an extended cloth, like a screen, and showed him the shadows of the silhouette of his beloved Wang. This brought happiness back to the emperor. But how did shadow theater become an animation technique?
A young German named Lotte reiniger she had been marveled in her childhood by the shadow theater that traveling artists and puppeteers brought to Berlin in the early late 19th century.
The restless Lotte was thinking about how to turn those shadows into an animated film and began to experiment in 1916 with shadow theater puppets that she placed on a nightstand. She moved the shapes slowly and for each small movement she took a photograph, similar to the current Stop Motion.
A few years later, Lotte would deliver to the world beautiful animated shorts for children such as The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), Papageno (1935) and Jack and the Beanstalk (1955). shades. And despite the development of 3D animation techniques, the flat concept of silhouettes continues to be a language that amazes us.
For this reason, we have compiled 4 animated shorts for children for you to enjoy and share with your children. Our list is in chronological order, starting with the most recent animated shorts.
Malaika, one of our animated shorts that has had the greatest impact. It tells us the story of a girl who must face the death of her father Komba, an elephant from the Savannah.
The animation is digital, simple but effective, it recovers the flat elements of the shadow puppets. The music was made entirely with voices (vocal sampling). Malaika is an excellent film to dialogue with children about the subject of death.
Another very interesting element of Malaika is that the colors correspond to a chromatic-semiotic code created by the author herself (Lizardo Carvajal) and that represents each of the emotions through which this fantastic animated short leads us.
A beautiful short that tells us a love story in a world full of gears and screws. Its steampunk aesthetic silhouettes recreate a setting between futuristic and ancient.
Despite being a digital animation like Malaika La Princesa, this short handles with complete neatness the stylized and neat language of the silhouettes. A wonderful story and fantastic animation. It's worth seeing! But let's look at animated shorts for kids made with shadows...
The Magic Beans, a story that has been wrongly attributed to Christian Andersen, is the story that serves as an argument to this masterpiece of animation.
Finally the Adventures of Prince Achmed, based on one of the accounts of the Thousand and One Nights; an animated short where Lotte Reiniger's mastery is clear
We hope that this selection of animated shorts for children made in shadow language will turn you out as a refreshing bath between so much virtual reality and both 3D.
If you are scared of reading to your children stories that seem to have a political connotation, I do not recommend Janosch. If you are afraid to talk about freedom, rebellion, I do not advise reading this author either. But if you are not afraid of the political word in art and if you are not afraid to give the words freedom and rebellion to the little ones, please do not stop reading Janosch without rest.
The most charming thing about Janosch's work is that it challenges power and questions social order as only other works such as The Little Prince or The Watermelon Seller. Power, often represented by kings, judges, policemen, is challenged by the weakest, as in his story "Yosa's Magic Violin", where its protagonist, a weak and humble boy who plays an enchanted melody with his violin, make the king as small as an ant.
But the graphic-poetic work of Janosch has nothing to do with the pamphlet or the doctrine. His stories are loaded with powerful libertarian and poetic messages and his work is often described as tender and raw. Perhaps because he has lived through the horrors of war, misery, Nazi repression and the lack of freedom, his work is loaded with an anti-authoritarian and anarchist component. His ironic and humorous work evokes, without a doubt, the gypsy, laconic and pastoral way of life, and his values of friendship tolerance.
When Janosch was 8 years old the dark cloak of fascism had begun to cover Europe. He was born in 1931 under the name Horst Eckert, in Hindenburg, what is now Zaborne, Poland. His mother was extremely religious and his father was an alcoholic worker, who left him in the care of his grandfather. At the age of thirteen, the boy Janosch had to be employed as a laborer in a smithy. It seemed that fate had not provided an easy life for him.
And he built it pointing west. After the war, he fled to Oldenburg and went to work in a textile factory. Then he would build another marker heading to Munich. But Janosch could not withstand anything that resembled power, not even the boot. He did not even resist the Art Academy, which considered the young Janosch lacking in talent. The abstract tendency, very common in the academy of that time, interested Janosch little. Later he would work as a freelance artist until in 1960 he published his first children's book thanks to his friend George Lenz. It was Lenz himself who persuaded Horst to adopt the name Janosch and with whom he would publish his first two books: Valek and Jarosch and Jhosa and the Bewitched Moon.
But his true literary success would come in 1979 with his book How beautiful is Panama and from which the animated series "Janoschs Traumstunde" ("Janosch's Dream Hour") would be born, which in 1985 German public television would air with great success. and of which I leave the video.
Janosch has published more than 250 titles and his work has been translated into more than 20 languages. But Janosch doesn't just write children's books. He also writes and illustrates works for the greatest. He has published several adult novels and illustrated several works by famous writers such as Charles Bukowski. He currently lives in Tenerife, Canary Islands, next to his wife.
]]>And that was how, in the middle of squares and avenues, she met other mothers who, like her, were claiming their missing children.
"Who has dared to take away the sacred fruit of our womb?" They asked themselves very sadly. Everyone in that country knew the answer, but kept silent out of fear.
Everyone knew that a great monster had taken over. Everyone knew that this monster was an ashen, many-headed tyrant, who hated joy, sharing, equality and many other sunny longings of the human heart. He, and it was a certainty, had taken the children of these mothers without leaving any trace of their existence other than the memory of those who loved them.
-What do we do? Asked the mother with the name of a flower, like the other mothers.
—We want our children back to have mate together, before breakfast; to celebrate their birthdays; to smell the sweet smell that rises from their shirts when we iron them, ”they said. But nobody answered.
They went for a walk together, they met every Thursday in the Plaza de Mayo with their children's cloth diapers tied around their heads. They resisted marching around the obelisk in the Plaza, in a counterclockwise direction to turn back time, as if by magic, that is, as by the art of love.
The tears of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo little by little became a luminous route of crumbs that many followed. Courage, like laughter, is always contagious. They never stopped tying hope to their belts: they marched with photos of their children, they put their silhouettes in every corner, they made white scarves fly like homing pigeons ... and to every street and every corner of the city they were asked about them.
—You don't know, suddenly they've seen them go by.
They never gave up. Nobody wanted to be forgotten, they all needed those children back. They were the children of all.
Mothers survived the tyrant. And in them, the dream of his children survived undefeated.
Between March 1976 and December 1983, Argentina suffered one of the most atrocious military dictatorships in the American continent. More than fifteen thousand disappeared, ten thousand prisoners and four hundred dead, were the product of military operations that suspended the main civil rights. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo fought every day for truth, memory and justice, on behalf of their children and human dignity.
The book "Once upon a woman"by the author Vera Carvajal, proposes a journey through different times and geographies of humanity at the hands of intense, powerful, entirely beautiful women, capable of turning pain into hope; of taming the bloody with words; of resisting and transforming ; of asking and answering; of nurturing life in love; of changing paradigms of being, of knowing, of loving, of doing.
They opposed the monster's firearms, the fire of love they felt for their children. They did not flinch. They joined each other and each other and each other ... until they were one. Thus, the son of one was the son of all: bone for bone, footprint for footprint, footprint after footprint, each child was the son of all. "The other is me," they said, looking into each other's eyes, recognizing themselves.There was a woman who decided to go out to look for her son, the day she did not return home. And that was how, in the middle of squares and avenues, she met other mothers who, like her, were claiming their missing children.
"Who has dared to take away the sacred fruit of our womb?" They asked themselves very sadly.
Everyone in that country knew the answer, but kept silent out of fear. Everyone knew that a great monster had taken over. Everyone knew that this monster was an ashen, many-headed tyrant, who hated joy, sharing, equality and many other sunny longings of the human heart. She, and it was a certainty, had taken the children of these mothers without leaving any trace of their existence other than the memory of those who loved them.
-What do we do? Asked the mother with the name of Or, like the other mothers.
—We want our children back to have mate together, before breakfast; to celebrate their birthdays; to smell the sweet smell that rises from their shirts when we iron them, ”they said. But nobody answered.
They opposed the monster's firearms, the fire of love they felt for their children. They did not flinch. They joined each other and each other and each other ... until they were one. Thus, the son of one was the son of all: bone for bone, footprint for footprint, footprint after footprint, each child was the son of all.
"The other is me," they said, looking into each other's eyes, recognizing themselves. They went for a walk together, they met every Thursday in the Plaza de Mayo with their children's cloth diapers tied around their heads. They resisted marching around the obelisk in the Plaza, in a counterclockwise direction to turn back time, as if by magic, that is, as by the art of love.
The tears of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo little by little became a luminous route of crumbs that many followed. Courage, like laughter, is always contagious. They never stopped tying hope to their belts: they marched with photos of their children, they put their silhouettes in every corner, they made white handkerchiefs fly like carrier pigeons ... and to every street and every corner of the city they were asked about them.
—You don't know, suddenly they've seen them go by. They never gave up. Nobody wanted to be forgotten, they all needed those children back. They were the children of all. Mothers survived the tyrant. And in them, the dream of his children survived undefeated.
Between March 1976 and December 1983, Argentina suffered one of the most atrocious military dictatorships in the American continent. More than fifteen thousand disappeared, ten thousand prisoners and four hundred dead, were the product of military operations that suspended the main civil rights. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo fought every day for truth, memory and justice, on behalf of their children and human dignity.
This story of the grandmothers and mothers of Plaza de Mayo, was taken from the book Once upon a womanby Vera Carvajal
The book “Once upon a woman” from the author Vera Carvajal, proposes a journey through different times and geographies of humanity in the hands of intense, powerful, entirely beautiful women, capable of turning pain into hope; to tame the bloody with the word; to resist and transform; to ask and answer; to raise life in love; to change paradigms of being, of knowing, of loving, of doing.
As well as the story of the grandmothers and mothers of Plaza de Mayo, find 21 more stories of struggle and dignity.
]]>There were twenty-two stories of women: twenty-two stories that traverse time and space; twenty-two emblematic stories that were chosen among many others. Stories that travel the world and cross the centuries and that give us the certainty that women were always somehow present in the world, sometimes quiet, other times hidden, often controlled, almost always submissive to patriarchal cultures that they sought the way to silence them and send them to the backyard. Probably so as not to have to face that cosmic power that they have to give their lives, and that they cannot assume. And not only to give life but to take care of it, to make it flow at any cost and finally to be able to overcome the disorder, chaos and desolation generated by the thousands of wars of men.
There was a woman, a splendidly illustrated book with twenty-two mammushkas, one for each story. A book that shows us that there are thousands of ways to write a story of women, of the women of the world, a story that reminds us of their fantastic sovereignty - traditionally destined for the loneliness of maternal reproduction - when they dare to face a world hostile and never intended for them, when they decide to speak, push the door of their castles to escape from the shadow of the domestic, use the strange magic of their smelly skin, make the impossible possible or revive a memory that cannot be lost , sometimes inventing potions that upset men, but always to remind us that this world is mixed, it is plural and that humanity without them would have been inexorably shipwrecked.
Today, and after centuries of silence, there are multiple stories of women. However, that long silence indicates that the question of whether there was anything interesting about her story was meaningless and not even raised. Also, what could be known about women and who was interested in listening to them when they said they had something to say? Let us remember that women, with some exceptions, which are precisely those that are included in Once upon a woman, had neither body nor word. Georges Duby had already told us, that great historian who tried to find some of them in the days of the cathedrals, when he warned us that we had to resign ourselves, because the only thing we could grasp of the feminine for a long time was only through the look of men. However, as some of them managed to gain access to knowledge, the most cultured dared to write, at times risking their lives, since indeed "women who write are also dangerous", as the title of a beautiful book reminds us. discover the life of wise women, educated and writers, throughout many centuries; women often unknown to the general public and even gagged in most manuals or compendia of world literature.
In this sense, Once Upon a Woman has the particularity of presenting us the story of twenty-two women, from the four corners of the world, who reaffirm with courage and unusual strength and wisdom, a love of life that touches madness; perhaps what we call today an ethic of caring for life. There, we find the transgressors of the edicts and mandates of a patriarchal culture in relation to the duty of women; we find the eternal victims of the thousands of wars generated by the devastating madness of men; mothers and grandmothers who cannot lose hope of embracing their missing children or grandchildren again; the brave revolutionaries of many revolutions; those who did not hesitate to demand bread and roses to obtain better working conditions in the factories; others, wiser than the wise, who knew the mysteries of the universe and its stars; the witches who by usurping a power that did not belong to them ended up at the stake and, in short, from our first Australopithecus sister, Lucy, the whole text is a tribute to women, to all women who believed in a better possible world for all and all. For a reason the earth is often named as mother earth and can only be feminine.
Hopefully this book will become a school text for high school, a text that allows more and more research on the issue of women's participation; a participation difficult to discern or to understand if one only stays in her words. Perhaps in their silences and in what they could not say, is the key.
Florence thomas
Bogotá, February 2015
Taken from the book Once upon a woman, written by Vera Carvajal, with a foreword by Florence Thomas
The book “Once upon a woman” from the author Vera Carvajal, proposes a journey through different times and geographies of humanity in the hands of intense, powerful, entirely beautiful women, capable of turning pain into hope; to tame the bloody with the word; to resist and transform; to ask and answer; to raise life in love; to change paradigms of being, of knowing, of loving, of doing.
Owners of their work, when factories were invented, women lent their hands, fast as swallows, so that the threads could be woven with pleasure.
Very soon, however, they discovered that factories were not the places they expected. They were rather gloomy, gray places, where breathing and laughter were oppressed by the ticking of an endless clock. Then, almost breathless and without joy, the women realized that they were becoming invisible. They began to notice it because one seemed like a mirror of the other: each day it was more difficult to see their silhouettes, even in the light of the skylights of the workshops.
When they returned home, the women barely had the breath to sing lullabies to their children. They weren't even the masters of darning that they used to be, not even the old songs lit their eyes and their cheeks turned hopelessly pale.
When they were about to be completely invisible, one whispered in the other's ear:
-You have realized? We are almost invisible now, but we still have a voice. "We have a voice ... We have a voice," they said to each other, like news of hope. Giggles clenched in the hands were heard here and there, like early spring shoots.
And the garden flourished with their voices: "Reduced working hours!" To equal work, equal salary! And a shy but firm voice added: "Bread and roses." "Bread and roses! ... Bread and roses!" Echoed the beating heart of more than twenty thousand voices united.
And the voices were heard in Lawrence, Chicago, Boston, New York ... but it was not an easy battle. The more the women's voices were heard, the louder the whistles, pistons and boilers of the factories sounded, accompanied by the voices of their powerful owners. "If you don't like the conditions, there are a thousand others behind your post." You will starve if you do not accept our conditions. But the women were not silent: "Reduction in working hours!" To equal work, equal salary! Bread and roses!
They resisted for eleven weeks, until they not only ceased to be invisible, but they illuminated the darkness of those days like a single red and rebellious flame.
In 1911 in New York City, 123 textile workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were killed in a terrible arson. This terrible event forced decisive changes in laws and labor rights around the world. Every March 8th International Women's Day is commemorated in honor of all those who dreamed of bread and roses on our tables.
Taken from the book Once upon a womanby Vera Carvajal
The book "Once upon a woman"From the authorVera Carvajal, proposes a journey through different times and geographies of humanity in the hands of intense, powerful, entirely beautiful women, capable of turning pain into hope; to tame the bloody with the word; to resist and transform; to ask and answer; to raise life in love; to change paradigms of being, of knowing, of loving, of doing.
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There was a woman with a bright smile. The tyrant thought he saw between the lines of some sacred book that the laughter of women offended all creation. He therefore did not hesitate, not for a moment, to issue a supreme command in which he forbade all the women who inhabited his kingdom to laugh.
"I will be benign," he said to everyone. "You may laugh in private, where you cannot alter upright morality." But if they are seen, heard or are suspected of laughing in public, they will receive exemplary punishment. The women looked at each other and held their breath for a second. They smiled and then, without anyone being able to stop it, laughed. They didn't just laugh, they laughed:
—Kahkaha, kehkehe, kihkihi, kohkoho, kuhkuhu.
It was so loud and so loud that the women's singing laughter was joined by the laughter of sunflowers and watermelons, bells and pigeons, who were in charge of transmitting the latest news to everyone.
"Laughter has been forbidden by the tyrant: kahkaha, kehkehe, kihkihi, kohkoho, kuhkuhu," was the answer throughout the kingdom.
As is well known, laughter is highly contagious, so it was not only women, watermelons, birds, bells who laughed; the men began to laugh. They laughed with their mouths, they laughed with their eyes, with their bellies and with their hands flapped in the air ...
—Kahkaha, kehkehe, kihkihi, kohkoho, kuhkuhu.
Even the stars of millenary skies laughed with their twinkling. The tyrant, who did not give up, shouted from her pedestal:
"Women can't laugh!" Her laughter is forbidden!
But everyone kept laughing with each breath, no longer able to hear such a foolish voice. They laughed until they cried and laughed at everything and, of course, at themselves. They also laughed in writing and in all languages.
"Hahahaha, hehehehe, hihihihihi, hohohoho, huhuhuhu! ...
"Hahahahaha, hahahahahahahahahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
When the collective attack of laughter ceased, the echo of the events continued to tickle them for a long time. They all ended up with an unprecedented, weightless happiness. Laughter is rebellion, they discovered.
Needless to say, the tyrant was overthrown. Nobody wanted him to repeat his lousy bad joke just in case.
In July 2014, the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey, Bülent Arınç, banned the laughter of women in public. "Women don't have to laugh in public because they have to be chaste," Arınç said.
As an immediate response, Turkish women not only laughed but laughed, taking advantage of social networks and the media. On Twitter there were more than three hundred thousand messages with the term "kahkaha", the Turkish word for "laughter"; as well as the hashtags #direnkahkaha, "the laugh of the resistance" and #direnkadin, "women who resist."
This story of the Laughter Rebellion was taken from the book Once upon a womanby Vera Carvajal
The book “Once upon a woman” from the author Vera Carvajal, proposes a journey through different times and geographies of humanity in the hands of intense, powerful, entirely beautiful women, capable of turning pain into hope; to tame the bloody with the word; to resist and transform; to ask and answer; to raise life in love; to change paradigms of being, of knowing, of loving, of doing.
As well as the story of the grandmothers and mothers of Plaza de Mayo, find 21 more stories of struggle and dignity.
]]>The idea of Books with nutritional values for children occurred to me, since I have been for some years, perhaps the same years that I am a father, thinking about the relationship between culture and food.
It is recognized by all that food is also a cultural fact. But thinking a little the other way around, which is how I like to think the most, could we say that culture is a way of eating? To make this comparison I will take a single cultural element: the books.
Food is commonly defined as the consumption of nutrients to provide our body with energy for the maintenance of vital functions. In short, food is what keeps us alive. But likewise I dare to think that books also provide our body with the energies to maintain our intellectual functions. Who can deny that after reading a book one feels more alive?
But what are nutrients? What is the name of that energy that we consume? In the case of food, they are classified into carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. But, in the case of books, what are these nutrients called? I think they are called ideas, which is the most elaborate of the forms of human thought, of its ability to reason, its creativity, self-reflection and its ability to receive and apply the intellect. So culture is another form of food, one that surely feeds us something as important as our body: it feeds us knowledge and spirit.
Likewise, food is a fundamental element in the growth and development of children, even before birth. Good nutrition contributes to the development of tissues such as bone and muscle, fundamental processes in the growth of children. After a certain age, food does not contribute to the growth of our organs and tissues, as it does to their maintenance. Books, for their part, also contribute to essential processes of growth and intellectual development of children, even from the womb. But unlike food, books will always contribute to the spiritual and intellectual growth of readers. With books we never stop growing. There we find a wonderful aspect of reading: reading a book always makes us grow. Therefore, it is important to deliver books with nutritional values for children.
The consolidation of an immune system from infancy is another fundamental contribution of nutrition. Nutrients help us to form tissues and white blood cells that protect us from disease. And what about the books? Will they help the formation of a type of immune system? Books have a high content of values, which could be the equivalent of an immune system that builds the foundations of our ethics and our conscience. It is undeniable that good books make us better people.
But food, in addition to all its nutritional contribution, gives us one of the greatest human pleasures. It is undeniable that the kitchen is one of the highest form of aesthetics and enjoyment that human beings have invented. Like books, which not only provide us with their cultural nutrients but also represent a real pleasure. Taking a book, be it a paper book or an electronic book, is to be before a work of art. Smelling the aroma of paper, caressing its textures, looking at the illustrations with amazement, and of course reading, represent one of the most enchanting pleasures of our civilization. Books with nutritional values for children
I personally consider that never before has humanity had such a wide and wonderful production of books designed for children. Today parents have a huge inventory of books to share with their children. Since Charles Perraut published in 1697 Les Contes de ma Mère l’Hey (The tales of mother goose) to this day, the most fantastic children's books have been published, such as The Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Robinson Crusoe (1719), by Daniel Defoe; Gulliver's Travels (1726), by Jonathan Swift; Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1872), by Lewis Carroll; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain; The Island of the Treasure (1883), of Robert Louis Stevenson; The specialized Children's magazine The Golden Age (1889) by José Martí; The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exúpery, and all the wonderful and prolific production of contemporary authors and illustrators.
But we must also recognize that just as there is non-nutritious food, and just as there are books with nutritional values for children, there are books that little nourish our spirit. And specifically I would like to refer to this phenomenon in the children's literature book. Attention parents and teachers: we must know that not all books have been conceived and written with the respect and care that the little ones demand. Just as sadly in supermarkets we find a great variety of poorly nutritious foods for children, bookstores, especially digital ones, are usually full of books that seem more well thought out to advertise a brand or a character from a movie or television show, than to tell a good story and contribute to the education and growth of our children.
These books are forming a true invasion of content without content, branding disguised as literature. These books mostly lack literary and illustrative quality. Most of them are terrible adaptations of classics like "Goldilocks and the three bears". Generally, these productions mediocrely adapt these classics to make them a lighter reading, violating the style of the original work. The illustrations are not done with care or creativity, but they seem to be an overly obvious representation of the text. These books are plagued with alleged interactions, animations and noises that hinder a true reading and make you lose sense of how central reading is. It seems as if they are trying to compensate for the lack of graphic and literary quality with a disturbing effect. On the other hand, these books are generally flooded with advertisements for video games and other products, which hinder their proper reading.
Parents and teachers must be attentive to this type of content, both nutritional and literary, because we are what we eat and we are what we read. Let's take more time before buying or downloading these types of books, read reviews, deepen the knowledge of the author in order to filter and arrive at better and endearing books with nutritional values for children.
]]>How to choose children's books in digital format, is what we want to share with parents and teachers in our entry today.
I think the biggest mistake is to start a search without considering the interests of the child. Adults, for example, never choose to read a book that we are not interested in reading. Like a child. That is why we must take into account the children's universe, their interests and their needs. Make him a participant in the selection of the book that you are going to download and choose a fun book together. Yes, the book should be fun for the parent or the teacher just as it should be fun for the child. Be very careful: if the book is not fun for an adult, it is highly likely that it is not fun for the child either. Also, if a child feels that the adult enjoys reading, she will enjoy it too and will learn to love reading.
It is possible that when we start our search for books we do it by typing in the search engine of a book store application such as Appstore, the words "children's books." Immediately we will get quantities of titles that are generally organized by number of downloads, privileging the most downloaded. You will notice that most of the books that appear first are free books, which are obviously the most downloaded. Don't get carried away by the urge to download these books. Sure, one might think, these books are ranked first because they are the best and they are free! But it's not like that. It does not mean that there are no free books of excellent quality, but that I can assure you, they are not the first results. But let's see more tips on how to choose children's books.
The world of books on an international level seems to have been invaded by the concept of Bestseller. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that this concept represents a commercial valuation of the book as a commodity that has nothing to do with the literary value of a work. In other words, the fact that it is the best-selling book does not guarantee its literary quality. Nor does it mean that a bestseller is synonymous with being a mediocre book, however I consider that there are other more interesting criteria when we think about how to choose children's books.
It is very important in the process of searching for children's books to make use of the reviews that have been written about the book. Do the exercise of “googling” the book to see what appears. Read the reviews that specialized literary critics have made about the book. Also in many eBook stores like iTunes, readers leave their comments and experiences of the book. In these comments we can find a huge source of documentation about the book based on the specific experience of the user.
It is important to spend a few minutes reading about the authors. Where he is from, when he was born, what other books he has written, etc. Likewise of the illustrators, who are also authors. Something that almost never fails is: never waste time downloading or buying a book that does not acknowledge the authorship of the writer or illustrator. A few days ago for example I downloaded a free version of "The Princess and the Pea", the second result in the AppStore in the category children's books in Canada. When I opened the application it caught my attention that nowhere does it mention its author, Christian andersen, much less the illustrator of that version. The book turned out to be what I expected: the classic poorly nutritious book, a poor and dishonest adaptation. However it seems to be one of the most downloaded books. Now, do you want to know more tips on how to choose children's books?
Many times electronic books offer a preview where we can see, before downloading the book, some of its literary and graphic content. Take time to read it and analyze how rich it is in terms of literary images. Try to choose books rich in analogies and metaphors that stimulate the imagination and start an interesting conversation with your child. Books that allow inferences, open questions. Avoid books full of platitudes, obvious endings, or flat characters.
As with texts, let's try to spend a little time looking closely at the illustrations in the books. The illustrations should spark children's imaginations. Illustration and text should come together harmoniously. A good illustration always complements and enriches the story. It should never interfere with your reading or interpretation. Be wary of graphics that clearly illustrate the text, as this means that there was no conscious work or valuable contribution from the illustrator. The images must have their own narrative character without being detached from the story. Take a little time to
analyze in which techniques the illustrations were made.
But let's learn more tips on how to choose children's books in digital format.
The appearance of the book in digital format has brought a great variety of possibilities to publishers. The support in electronic tablets and computers have allowed to integrate the universe of the book, unthinkable and wonderful possibilities. Carefully analyze the technical characteristics of the book you are going to buy. Many wonderful app books like Morris Lessmore's Flying Books or The bird of a thousand songs, take full advantage of the possibilities of tablets. Here we leave you the trailer of one of these wonderful application books:
E-books are often narrated. Make sure the narration is a quality narrative. Although most books have excellent high-level storytellers, a small portion make use of low-professional storytellers, or I have even seen some books that use digitized voices that result as if a real robot is reading to your child. However, something very important: the story, no matter how good, will never replace the story of a teacher or a parent. Neither is the narration that the child can do. Make sure that your e-books have the possibility to turn off the narrator to narrate yourself.
The narration is generally accompanied by a soundtrack. Take care that the soundtrack has musical quality. Hopefully the book has original music. Many times some publishers, just to meet the requirement of having music, use generic music purchased from some web pages that offer this service. They use this so much that many times we can find several books in our library that use the same music clip. Many other times, there are books that are limited to having a single loop that is mechanically repeated on all the pages of the book without any meaning. Something is certain in this: the best e-books are those with original music.
Reading tablets, as well as computers, have allowed digital publishers to make use of the animation of book illustrations. Most of the time, the animation usually happens, it is an ideal complement for the animation. However, many times, animations can hinder reading, distract the reader and do not contribute to the semiotics of the image. Sometimes the excessive animation, almost that does not allow us to recognize between what is a movie and a book. The animation should be measured and should allow the reader time to read the image statically in order to appreciate the symbolic details of a truly good illustration.
Animations often allow for an interaction with the reader. However you have to be careful with this. Let us not lose sight of the fact that we are giving a child a book, even if it is an electronic book. Interactions that are not made with a meaning, make us lose the essential that is the act of reading. In this sense, it is very important to see if the animations contribute to a fun reading or on the contrary they will take the reader away from the essential. Don't forget something, a book is a book and a video game is a video game. That your son or taste very good. Many books can even propose rather boring games for a child used to playing real highly developed video games. As you can see, it is an easy task for us to choose books for children.
Multi-language books are truly exciting, not only for children but also for adults. The possibility of reading (even if we don't speak the other languages) represents a very interesting exercise from the reading point of view. Playing with other languages, listening to the narration in a language that is not yours can be magnificent. Of course, for bilingual societies such as Canada, this type of resource in digital books is extremely interesting.
Playfulness is the ability to learn by playing. Reading should be conceived as a ritual but also as part of the game. The readings have led generations of children to create games that are based on their readings. The games of pitaras, cowboys, princes and princesses generally have an antecedent in the readings. When you buy a book, think: after reading it, what can we play?
Perhaps this is the most important tip on how to choose children's books. Likewise, the book that is profound, that is interesting and that was elaborated with respect and knowledge of the world of children, must necessarily lead us to reflect on life. Be wary of a book that doesn't invite you to think a little more after you've read it. It is not about the books becoming indoctrinating or moralizing. Those books should also be mistrusted. But books should tell us about life and all the wonderful themes that life itself invites us to. Good books should allow us to talk about the important things in life with our children or students.
I hope these 10 tips on how to choose children's books have been very useful for our readers. A hug.
A few days ago we came across a very interesting opinion piece that manages to express some of our concerns regarding what we now call “children's literature”. The article was written by Gregorio Luri for Elperiodico.com and we wanted to share it with you so that we can talk about the relevance of quality content for our children. Bon appetit and good reading.
I don't like the label "children's and young adult's literature." There is simply good or bad literature and there is very good literature accessible to children. A literature only for children or for young people seems too limited to be good. What I have no doubt about is that children's and young people's literature is a commercial phenomenon comparable to that of self-help books, from which it is often indistinguishable by the way.
Nor do I believe in the benefits of any kind of reading or that any book has thaumaturgical cultural powers by itself. There is terrible literature that is more harmful to children than the industrial bakery that we do not allow into schools.
Just as there is the fast-food, there is the fast-book. It is not literature, but it entertains. Instead of fats, it carries cheesy morals and political correctness propaganda. It is to literature what chewing gum is to gastronomy. There are no descriptions, no difficult words, no complex facts, and, as there are no subjunctives or subordinates. Of thefast-bookanything that could be mistaken as a literary provocation is excluded. Everything in it must be easily chewable and comfortably digestible. Its molding is Spielberg, no Verne or Stevenson. Conclusion:Massagran or the Zoo d’en Pitus they have run out of new readers.
What author of children's literature would dare to say what Manolo Vazquez, the creator of Anacleto secret agent or The Gilda sisters: «My readers are children, but there is a misconception of childhood: children are mean, cruel, mischievous, petardists… I like them that way, because I am like that”?
Precisely because it leaves no trace, the expression "youth literature" is - especially in the case of boys - an oxymoron. Our children read, but when they reach adolescence they turn away from books like the plague. If it's about having fun, they soon discover that there are faster ways to do it. One in four university students does not read a novel a year. This shows that we lack an authentic didactics of reading that is serious about educating the literary culture of young people. To develop reading comprehension –which is the key to the reading habit– four irreplaceable things are needed: the example of adult readers, knowledge, attention and emotional intelligence.
Knowledge is essential because the more we know about a topic, the easier it is for us to read about that topic and the more interested we are in expanding what we already know. Reading interest is not the engine of knowledge, but rather, on the contrary, knowledge is the engine of reading interest. Regarding attention and emotional intelligence, suffice it to say that the best way to educate them is slow reading. There is not coach that it reaches Tolstoy to the sole of the shoes.
I conclude with an important observation: the number of books a child has at home is the best predictor of future school performance.
Gregorio LuriHe is a Spanish philosopher and pedagogue. Doctor in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona and Extraordinary Doctorate Award. He is a professor of Philosophy at the UNED in Barcelona and at the Sabadell School of Design. He collaborates in the newspaper Ara and in Elperiodico.com. He is the author of Better educate. Advice to parents on common sense(2014), Following in the footsteps of the almogávares (2014), The school against the world(2008), Guide not to understand Socrates (2004), Promise yours. Biographies of a myth (2001) and The Socrates process (1998).
]]>If your child is less than 15 years old, he is surely a digital native. That is to say, of those kids who have grown up with digital technologies and who swim in it like a fish in water. For them we have prepared these 5 books for digital natives.
Being the father of a digital native confronts us with new questions in parenting, especially the challenge of understanding a world that moves differently from the world we had in our childhood. For example, the new reading formats, which obey the dynamics of a transmedia narrative deployed on multiple platforms, which involves readers in an active role and which puts us in front of a central question: in the face of so much technology How do I make my child a good reader?
For those charming digital natives who run around your house, we recommend the following titles, which allow children to enjoy the bridge between digital technologies and print, the delicious smell of paper and ink, and most importantly, beautiful and inspiring stories.
Author: Edouard Manceau
Language: English
Beautiful cardboard book with a rectangular die-cut that acts as a window open to the gaze of the reader who must seek, as a proposal -or provocation- on each page, specific things in the world around him: numbers, letters, colors, textures, sizes, shapes. Illustrated with simple visual elements that motivate the curiosity, exploration and imagination of children, who experience the close relationship between their world and the book.
Author: Hervé Tullet
Language: English
The curiosity of pressing the yellow button on the cover is the departure of a simple game that invokes the imagination to go from page to page, as if it were a journey, making the yellow point grow, multiply, change color, size and address to the joy of readers who are involved in an experience of virtual interactivity in a flat element: the book.
Author: Lizardo Carvajal
Language: Spanish English
The bird of a thousand songs is the wonderful story of a bird that can imitate the song of a thousand birds is the gateway to meet real and imaginary birds that are a compliment to the imagination in which children meet unsuspected trills, feathers and flights, which leads to children to invent their own birds, to believe in their own wings and to understand that difference is what makes us vital. Being animated through a mobile application that gives movement and sound to all the birds, this is one of the highly recommended books for digital natives! Buy The bird of a thousand songs.
Car: William Joyce
Language: English
The book that inspired the Oscar-winning short is a compliment to books in the world today in all formats. It tells the story of Mr. Lessmore, a book lover who writes hoping that his memoirs will be a great book one day. But one day a great hurricane arrives and Mr. Lessmore's book flies past houses, streets, people, leaving the town sadly desolate. But in the midst of the desolation something really incredible happens: a woman arrives flying taken by books that hold her in the air as if they were powerful helium balloons. Definitely one of the books for digital natives that you will enjoy with your boy.
Author: Lizardo Carvajal-Eulalia Cornejo
Language: Spanish English
A real cat It is album book with beautiful illustrations that can be given life from a cell phone through a simple application that encourages the protagonist, a cat that does all the things contrary to what most cats do: he loves to bathe, eats apples and is good with birds. So what does it take to be a real cat? This is definitely one of the super-recommended digital native books, for shared reading from 2 years and early readers from the age of 4. Buy a real cat.
Although we are becoming more and more familiar with the concept of eBook, still the conflict Book on paper vs electronic book continues to haunt. Especially the children's book makes us think again which of the two we prefer to give to our children: electronic books or paper books?
Although adult audiences seem to be getting more and more used to the idea of reading on a reading tablet, some parents wonder which of the two their children should use. A very interesting question that is worth analyzing.
The book must be, essentially, a literary work, written to be enjoyed and read. But the book is also a cult object. Nothing can replace the pleasure of smelling its pages and inks, feeling the texture of the paper in your hands. Printing as a work of art is valued by many readers, who find in these bound and bound books the eternal and best friends.
When a father gives a paper book to a child, it is as if he were giving him a small treasure that the child will know how to keep and care for. No parent can deny how good it feels to read a paper book when we take our children to sleep, for example. But can a reading tablet spoil the intimate and magical moment of reading? The idea of a paper book vs an electronic book occupies us again.
The e-book concept is new. Very new when compared to paper books. Only until the end of the nineties were successful e-book experiences possible. But since then, thousands of freelance writers and publishers have not stopped making creative and interesting proposals and putting all their effort and love into these types of books.
Although I am one of the parents who would rather use a book than an iPad when I read a bedtime story to my daughter, I think it is not necessary to isolate her from hundreds of beautiful e-book developments that currently exist. Why isolate it from such beautiful electronic books as Morris Lessmore's Fantastic Flying Books or The bird of a thousand songs?
Complementing readings on print with readings on digital formats is the smartest decision a parent can make. One thing is very clear: an electronic book will never replace the magic of a printed book. But we must also think that electronic books offer beautiful possibilities, many times unknown.
One of the experiences of integrating the universe of paper with new technologies is the one presented by the publisher LuaBooks, which has developed a paper book that can be animated with a smartphone. The bird of a thousand songs is a children's book that through interaction with the BirdTron application allows illustrations on paper to be animated and have sound. Choosing between a paper book or a digital one will no longer be necessary, children will be able to enjoy the best of technology and the charm of reading on paper.
Digital books are the product of the careful and careful development of writers, illustrators, animators, musicians, storytellers, developers, translators; people who put all their effort into producing books with resources that paper books cannot have. For example, the possibility of switching to different languages, listening to a narration or setting the reading with music, seeing the animated illustrations, etc.
However, there are several risks in the use of electronic books for children that keep the question of paper book vs electronic book current. The first, and most notable, is that the book is not used for what a book must be used for, which is to exercise the act of reading. If my son does not read with an electronic book, that indicates that it is not a well done book. There are many of these electronic books where the essential thing is not the reading, but the interactions and distractions. They are books full of effects, movements, sounds, games that hinder reading. That is a problem of editorial criteria of certain book producers, which should be noted, fortunately they are not the majority.
But be very careful: this phenomenon is also experienced in the world of the paper book. Currently, there are many books on paper that for a marketing effort include stickers, drawing exercises and activities that become distractions from a real reading. And it is interesting to analyze that this phenomenon generally occurs in books where there is also poor literary quality. For this reason, parents and teachers must have certain criteria in the selection of both printed and digital content.
To finish these reflections about book on paper vs digital bookIt is worth emphasizing that just as not all printed books are in digital format, not all digital books are in print. And it is important to note that many independent authors and small publishers facing the power of large publishing groups have found a way to publish their works in digital media. Works that are often of the highest editorial quality, interesting and risky subjects to which the commercial criteria of the largest publishers did not pay much attention. For this reason, it is worth not only consuming books from large publishing companies, but also knowing and supporting new and alternative proposals that at the moment are only found in digital formats.
The debate of the paper book vs electronic book remains open. But one thing is very sure: a good story is always a good story, no matter how you read it.
The Little Prince was published 70 years ago. On April 6, 1943, it was placed in bookstores in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock.
This beautiful story, written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, tells us about a little boy from distant Asteroid B-612 and his critical perspective on the adult world. The Little Prince is a true children's classic (not just for boys) and probably one of the few books to exceed 150 million copies produced around the world in more than 250 languages and dialects.
A year after its publication, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry died on a military flight off the coast of Provence, when his plane was shot down by a German bomber. Exupéry, an aviation pioneer, author and explorer, never received a single peso for The Little Prince.
But I don't want to talk about dates, numbers or money like a "serious man" who only knows how to count. I want to tell you about The Little Prince and me.
Not long ago I was a pale, skinny kid. Fortunately for me, I can remember. And I say fortunately because only those who remember the child that he once was can read this book. It was the strict and bald professor of literature who for the first time showed me The Little Prince.
I must admit that the first thing that caught my attention was not the words of The Little Prince. It was the illustrations. I can still remember the beautiful watercolor of an elephant inside a boa constrictor. I must also admit that what I saw was a hat (as an adult would have seen it) in drawing number 1, not an elephant and a snake, how a real child should see it.
For a long time this troubled me greatly. "Maybe I'm an old-boy," he thought worriedly. He also thought that there should be a way to see elephants inside a boa, instead of seeing hats.
And quickly, while reading the book, I found the answer: “It doesn't look good if not with the heart; The essential is invisible to the eyes". Then I understood that my problem was that I was trying to see with my eyes, and not with my heart, so I could only see hats.
Since then, I have been trying to see the world more with my heart and less with my eyes. Honestly, it's not easy, you know.
I must admit that The Little Prince lives in me and in my stories. Who reads Malaika the princess or Sir William McCrow's fantastic aviaryFor example, you can find the presence of baobabs.
Thanks to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the same pale skinny boy (a bit old now) is a children's book writer, trying to get children to see elephants inside boas instead of hats.
]]>Eulalia Cornejo has an unmistakable line. Her characters have big eyes and heads, small bodies. They are light and float on her canvases weightlessly, as if levitated in the same universe as Chagall. The geometric nature of her proposal reveals her fascination for African art.
But above all, when one is in front of the work of Eulalia Cornejo, one feels the beautiful essence of childhood, embedded in a dreamlike world, intensely tender. The line of her illustrations is as moving as her color palette and the two, together, manage to touch you.
Eulalia was born in the middle of the world, in Quito, on October 4. Since she was a child, and until today, she has not stopped scribbling, playing with images, words, shapes and colors, which has led Eulalia Cornejo to be an illustrator representing Ecuador on the Honor Roll of the Ibby (International Board on Books for Young People) in the periods 2006-2007 and 2007-2008.
Eulalia Cornejo has illustrated many books for different Ecuadorian and Latin American publishers and is also the author and illustrator of four album books: Porque existes tú (Alfaguara), When green cats sing (Trama), Enriqueta (Alfaguara), and A real cat (LuaBooks 2015)
Although she has many awards and recognitions, for Eulalia Cornejo her most important award are her children, Clara Luz and Teo. But in addition to his two beautiful children, (whom I have the pleasure of meeting) Teo, child of the sun and Clara, girl of light eyes, we can count, among other recognitions, his unique prize in illustration Darío Guevara Mayorga of the Municipality of Quito in the years 2000, 2001, 2006 and 2007. Honorable Mention, 2013. Also third place in the Noma-Unesco International Illustration Contest, Japan 2003 with his book When green cats sing.
The most recent book with the mastery of Eulalia Cornejo is A real cat, which tells us about a very special kitten, who does not do what others do, but he himself does not doubt that he is a real cat. This is a beautiful book to talk with our children about the right to be different and the great creative power of the imagination.
The book also comes with BookTron technology, developed by LuaBooks, with which each of the pages of this book can be animated using your cell phone iPhone or Android. Both applications are free to download.
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Irene Vasco gets up, leaves her warm blankets behind; she opens a strange book exactly in the middle: she ties it behind her back and the book begins to flap; she opens her windows wide and flies through the mountains of Colombia. In a bag, Irene carries colored letters like seeds that she drops and that when they fall, explode like flowers and oranges. Children wait for her because they know she brings stories of cats, spells and spells.
Today we have the honor of talking with Irene Vasco, a children's book writer, artist of the word, book promoter, workshop teacher, translator, librarian… words are too short to describe Irene's important work.
Irene Vasco: I believe that man has always dreamed of flying. Not only in books, but also in tradition. Remember from the Greeks to Icarus, Olympus, the Gods. Our indigenous communities, in the cosmogony, there are always flying beings. The beings of the world above, in the middle and below trying to communicate.
Right now I am reading a book by Paul Auster where a child has to learn to fly. It is not exclusive to children's literature. Even superheroes, if they didn't fly, didn't have all their superhero qualities. So, it is a dream of man that is also present in children's literature, like all man's dreams.
Irene Vasco: The girl Irene was the worst student any school could have had. I currently work in education; the teachers ask me questions: “what do I do with such a child? What do I do with the child who does not pay attention? " And I don't have an answer because I didn't understand anything at school. I did the tasks in any way just by presenting them in any way on a paper, a notebook. But having no idea what he was doing.
On the other hand, in my house there were many books. My mom is an artist, my mom is a singer. When I was a child, she did television shows for children. They were from the first programs. I was born and soon after, television was born in Colombia. And since I was little in my house, I always had a relationship with composers, with musicians who were part of the permanent inventory of my house. I went to television studios; she helped write stories from a very young age. My mom told me "come and write a song." And everything was always very fast. The programs were live, twice a week. In the program, my mother held painting contests and the publishers gave them collections of books to present to the winning children. For weeks those wonderful collections were in my living room and I had access to that. My grandmother was a storyteller, my dad was also a storyteller. That is, my childhood was very rich in literature.
Irene Vasco: To read them and fill them with drawings and dialogues. The book has its own images in the words. Poetry is image, literature is image.
Irene Vasco: Literature has to thrill. Literature, loaded with messages, loses its character as literature and becomes lesson material. Literature should allow the reader to draw their own conclusions, make their own readings, have different levels of interpretation. When there is a clear, direct message, it loses that character of a work of art in which everyone can interpret; it becomes a lesson from someone who wants to convey their value, but who is not a universal value. It doesn't have to be a universal value. It may be a value for some, but why is my value going to be everyone's value? For me, literature is sacramentally clean in terms of transmission of lessons.
IV: I never make a difference between one place and another. Wherever there is someone who listens to me, there I am always available with books and words; the emotions of literature, in any place. They say to me: "Are you not afraid to go to such places?" I say no, for me everything is Colombia and we are all Colombians. We are all people. It is an audience that I am going to address with literature and that does not change anything, they are people. Make the place more beautiful ... as it generally is, because the air is cleaner with different views. Literature is equally moving on one side or the other.
Irene Vasco: Just as I have written very funny and very light books on family life, school, jokes between siblings, writing about those other topics is the same: it is finding a story that touches me inside. They always tell me around there "oh, you should write this story" yes, but that is "your" story and it has not touched me, my skin has not felt anything with that story, you have to tell it. I have to tell the stories that go through me, be they happy or dramatic, like the books you mentioned. And in my travels through Colombia I have come across very painful stories that have touched me and the only way to free myself from them is by writing them.
Irene Vasco: For me one of the most dramatic things about the school in Colombia is the lack of transmission about the country, a country that we do not know. It was terrible for me to discover as an adult, when my children were teenagers, that I could not tell them anything about my country because I did not know it, because the school had not transmitted it to me. And now, I recommend to schools throughout the country, from the most elegant urban schools to the most remote schools in the jungle and in the mountains, the transmission about what Colombia is. You cannot create a project of a country, of national union, of harmony, of common work, for an unknown country.
That discovery forced me to read and find sources. Better, to confront sources, because the story is told in so many ways so manipulated, so unreal that to find a "thread" that looks like what it really was, you have to read a lot and verify in many parts, consult with many people. I do not guarantee that nothing is as it happened, but it is the closest, according to the people who were close to me and according to my books, to the events.
That is something that impresses me: historians do not write for children. I, who do not know anything and am not a historian, am the one who has to write for the children so that they know their country. that's a paradox. And historians don't write for boys because they don't have the language or the approach. That is also natural. Writing for children requires sensitivities, a trained voice and I have had it since I was a child. For me it is natural.
I believe that there is more and more development in this genre. Fortunately, publishers care about making quality books, with very rich content, with quality illustrations. It is a very difficult and very dedicated job. Much more difficult than publishing novels for young people, because it is delicate, it is "information", it is not creation and fiction according to the author's air.
Irene Vasco: Jairo has been part of my family since he was very young and I was also very young. I did not live in Colombia and my mother who is a musician, worked with that young composer; they did educational concerts. I'm talking about forty years ago and he came to visit me in Venezuela, in Maracaibo where I lived with my children, with some wonderful cassettes. María del Sol, my daughter who now writes and makes music for children, used to say “I am that girl who sings”. And I joined all that medium.
Jairo, in addition to being the father of children's music in Colombia, has been inventing Gutenberg's printing press for forty years, but such that it is a useful tool in schools, especially in rural schools where there are so many stories that are not put into words written. So that children can transmit their voices, so that they can transcribe their stories, so that communities can make their books in their own languages. But not only rural communities, in urban communities we have worked a lot, especially in programs for people who have been displaced, in community centers, so that the written word is alive.
Irene Vasco: Some twenty-five or thirty years ago, when the Espantapájaros Bookstore opened, Latin American children's literature occupied a small corner of the bookstore and was practically all occupied by the wonderful collections of that time by Alfaguara, Anaya, SM, all with European and North American authors. That fed us a great many. I think that children's literature in Colombia has to do with those readings we had when those collections arrived. They drew the veil of manners to tell the children about life in a more contemporary way, something that was not present.
So this whole generation, which included Triunfo Arciniegas, Ivar Da Coll, Yolanda Reyes, Pilar Lozano, Celso Román, we nurtured ourselves from the collections we had at that time and we jumped; we open the trail. We managed to break that traditional confinement in which we were here, while in Argentina, Cuba, and Brazil, children's and young people's literature exploded. From María Elena Walsh on in Argentina, the authors overflowed in imagination, in themes, in genres. The same in Brazil. And the poetry in Cuba would be of an amazing level.
I think we have leveled off in some way. I think that in each Latin American country there are already excellent authors, there are searches. That at least we already connected, because it was very difficult to have literature from other Latin American countries. It was very expensive. But fortunately there is much more circulation and we can get closer to what is happening in each of these countries. And I think that now we can talk about quality literature, that is, compete without blushing anywhere in the world.
Irene Vasco: On the one hand, continue working with indigenous communities. On the other hand with Jairo in the proposal of manual printing, which is a formidable tool to train readers. And on the other hand, with digital books. My husband and I have a publishing house,www.emilibro.com and for now we are transforming the Editorial Panamericana reading plan, the virtual reader plan, to digital books, which are not ePub or animations. They are books made on a platform that Colciencias has already certified as a Colombian high-tech platform. They are real books, they are books where you can write, paint, take notes in the margin, that exist in the cloud and that are also hosted on computers. That can be seen on any computer, be it Microsoft, Mac or tablets. That they are open to the universe and that they are connected to the ecosystem.
Irene Vasco: I think there is not much discussion there. Digital books exist although they are not as popular in some countries. We have to try to produce the best catalog of digital books possible, with the best possible technology, not only for urban centers, where the paper book is present, but also for those remote places where the paper book does not reach. Access to the book is very difficult, the small collections sent by the State are never enough. On the other hand, programs like Computers to educate are present.
Irene Vasco: That the written word, from reading or writing, will always open universes that will nurture, that will enrich their lives and that I hope this possibility belongs to everyone.
]]>In 1998, Francisco J Gutiérrez published his book Silvio Rodríguez: the chosen one. A magnificent 378-page work that presents us with one of the most profound and rigorous studies of the Cuban master's work, and of which I had the honor of being an editor. Today we share an excerpt from the book that makes a brilliant analysis of the song The Strange Man.
The song The strange man it was premiered at the concert in Chile, on March 31, 1990, in Santiago, after the return to democracy and was dedicated to Victor Jara. However, moving away a bit from the fact of having been dedicated to the Chilean singer-songwriter, the strange man seems to be a marginal man, marginalized, but who has the gift of giving without asking for anything in return. Detached from all material ambition, he is strictly the opposite of the type of "successful" human being that capitalism proposes to us. The strange manHe is a pure idealist, a poet who believes that the world can be changed with only love, with only peace.
From my perspective, the strange man brings us to a fundamental theme: the transforming power of love, approached from the perspective of a human being who, from his daily life and from small acts of love, manages to change the world ... As Galeano told us: “Many small people in small places, doing little things can change the world ”. But I leave you with the accurate and profound analysis of my great friend Francisco J. Gutiérrez.
Western society sick healthy and enthroned wicked. If it were in his hands the troubadour would build a "village in a very remote forest, two inches behind the sun, each tenant in a flower and on each floor is love"
The creators enjoy (or suffer?) Sensitivity, exposed and sick; changes in climate, mood or behavior turn them on and off, lift them up and prostrate them. They grow in isolated and uncontaminated spaces: jungle, interiority or spaces alien to individualistic struggles. They depend, in other cases, on extra-natural resources such as drugs, liquor or belief in spiritual guides who take their followers out of the concrete world. Finally, we have the cases of creators who, through reflective observation and self-development, recreate or prolong individual universes that Silvio defines specifically as childhood. Fortunately for his followers, his enlightened vision draws from that source.
Made to measure, this refuge increases capacity and ingenuity in times of creative waking. Regressions traumatize, the harsh reality shakes inclemently in proportion to the rapport achieved and not even think about the final return or its slow decomposition.
Silvio dedicates this song to the laughingstock of the people, hypersensitive child of the cycle that does not adapt to urban-rational voracity
That man was strange, / or so they took him,
because he kissed everything / what he found in his path.
He kissed people, / the dog, the furniture
and sweetly bit / the window of a room.
When I went out to the street / I was kissing the neighborhood
corners, sidewalks, / portals and markets,
and on movie nights / (also theater nights)
he kissed his chair / and those on his sides.
For these and many others / the sane took him
where no one would see it, / where not to remember it,
and they say that in his cell / he kissed his shoes,
his cot, his bars, / his mud walls.
One day without warning, / that strange man died
and very naturally / on land they planted it.
At that very moment, / from the sky, the birds
they discovered that the world / had been born lips.
Huge and historical feeling of guilt invades us; How many times has city indifference been a bar or lock for men deserving of better luck? Loving and harmless, object of derision that they stoically endure without apparent disappointment. Who or what makes us behavior regulators? What is the model? Who does it represent?
Manifestations of steely humanism, like The Strange Man, bring to mind the loving naivety of older brothers, aborigines of America. The cruel "use of reason", how many killed and how many more unhinged?
Creators inhabit fringes bordering on happiness and misery, exaltation and routine, sweetness or harshness, and their reasons are not always understood. The width of the strip that exposes them is unknown and frequently makes them jugglers of aggressiveness or misunderstanding.
The north of human behavior is not alien to us; We present it and towards it, unnoticed, we line up efforts and desires; but, cowardice or prudence wreak havoc on our consciences.
Article The strange man. Page 59 Taken from the book: Silvio Rodríguez El Elegido, 1998. Francisco J. Gutiérrez. Editorial FAID.
One of the works of feminist children's literature saved me, and my daughter, from Disney's princely propaganda. I leave you this anecdote to emphasize the need for a children's literature free from stereotypical and sexist looks. A children's literature that contributes to gender equality and a more equitable society.
The last few weeks had been unbearable. Not long ago, the premiere of Frozen and Christmas 2014 had passed. My daughter had received an exaggerated amount of gifts related to princesses. Against my will, she had been bombarded with this kind of Disney propaganda. Needless to say, they had done it of the best will, however, it was I who had to suffer watching my four-year-old daughter, playing Princess Elsa, talking about castles and crowns, singing Let it go, and trying to freeze everything , even me.
What really bothered me the most was that my daughter had adopted a fragile attitude, which she had never had before. She was very worried that her crown would not fall off, that her dress would not get dirty. She cried more, she was more dependent. And worst of all, in our games, I had to be a ridiculous snowman named Olaf.
I had to do something. I could not stay "frozen" in such a situation. I do not want a princess daughter, but I did not want to forbid her to use her toys, because I know it is the worst mistake I could have made. So, faced with such a situation, I just had to invoke the super powers of Pippi Longstocking. Only she, with her magnificent strength, could defeat the terrible princesses who had taken possession of my house and my daughter.
War was declared. And I was preparing, silently and strategically, my lethal arsenal. She knew that only Pippilotta Viktualia Rullgardina Krusmynta Efraimsdotter Långstrump (Daughter of Efraim Långstrump) had the strength to defeat Princess Elsa. Only that book had the power to rescue my daughter from the clutches of Disney.
For those who have not read Pippi Longstocking, this is a book written by Astrid lindgren in 1945, which tells the adventures of Pippi, a 9-year-old girl gifted with great strength, motherless, and her father, Efraim Långstrump, who is a pirate, king of the currelotas. This work is one of the precursors of feminist children's literature, since it proposed, for the first time, a creative, strong and rebellious girl in the face of all the conventional, as the protagonist of a children's book.
What I like the most about Pippi is that she is a brave, intelligent, strong, beautiful girl, as I know she is my daughter. Also, another thing I love about Pippi is that she doesn't respect authority and makes fun of two dumb cops. I like that she is a friend of animals and that she sleeps with her feet on the pillow, like someone who turns the whole world upside down.
It was easy to start reading the book, as I read stories to my daughter every night. So, following Cherezade's strategy, I read the opening of Pippi Longstocking and walked away very slowly, saying nothing, imposing nothing. There she had left that first story and the next night, she would prove how effective Astrid Lindgren's pen is.
The next night, I picked up another book and started another story. But my daughter interrupted me. Aren't you going to keep reading Pippi? I wonder. And with a satisfied smile, like someone who achieves her mission, I continued reading that night and the following, the adventures of Pippi Long Calzas, until I finished the book. An adventure for every night.
The results of our reading were more than obvious. Within two days of starting to read Pippi Long-set Calzas, the princesses were already in the humiliating place of forgotten toys. My daughter would draw freckles on her face, wear two socks of different colors and ask me to make two tails for her. He had adopted the character. A teddy bear was now a mico, Mr Nelson, and a dog was his horse, Little Uncle. He slept with his feet on his pillow and asked me to lift her up by tickling her on the floor of her feet.
But not only had he taken Pippi's form. Now she was behaving valiantly, she was a "findy," less shy, less submissive, stronger. Irreverent with authority, that is, with me, and that I loved, even though I should bear the cost of what I had read to her and what I had created in her: a feminist-anarchist in power, perhaps.
My daughter ceased to be fragile, now she was strong and determined. I stopped being a ridiculous snowman and now I was the pirate Efraim Lungstrump. We lived with a monkey and a horse in our Villa Mangaporhombro. And Princess Elsa had been left in the coldness of oblivion. Pippi's strength, and the effectiveness of Astrid Lindgren's pen and her work of feminist children's literature, had been proven.
Everything was fine, until one day, someone gave him a pink frisbee, decorated with princesses. It looked like the princesses had returned "flying." But we did something great. I proposed to my daughter to paint on the illustration of the princesses a drawing of Pippi Long Calzas. "Is that how you're going to fly further?" I wondered. "Indeed, my child," he said.
Now I have no doubt that art and literature change our world. And I will tell this anecdote to those who believe that children's literature is not a serious thing, that it does not change realities, that it does not change the world; to all who think that children's literature has only one purely recreational function. We must tell everyone that feminist children's literature is liberating and will contribute substantially to a better world.
I write this article a few days after Disney announced that it will release the second part of its greatest hit: "Frozen 2," or as you might also call it: "Elsa Counter-Attack"
I want to tell the Disney lords that the battle, this battle, they've already lost it. Art will always be stronger than propaganda.
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In this edition of our blog, we have prepared 7 tips for children to read, as we know that this is one of the great concerns of parents and teachers. Well, here we leave you 7 strategies to encourage reading in children.
Physical contact with books is the most fundamental of advice for children to read. Let the children touch books, feel their textures, let them smell them, let the child have her own books. It does not mean that we should buy a lot of books. Public libraries and book clubs are also an excellent option to bring children closer to reading.
The agenda of adults, and even many children, seems to be full of activities. But if we want to promote reading among children, we must allocate a space for it. Reading requires time, an opportunity to meet the book, so take time to read. Read for your children to see you read and read with your children.
Determining schedules, amount of readings, topics and other academic and disciplinary practices can have dire consequences to encourage reading in children. While dedication is necessary, we know that reading for pleasure rather than obligation is more effective, and this is one of the most effective tips for children to read.
It is difficult to form a reading community if only children are required to read and it is not entirely enough for children to see their parents or teachers read. Reading together is one of the most effective tips for children to read. It is also an opportunity to get to know each other, to establish a secret language that only those who have shared stories and endearing characters know.
Although we do not all have to be experts in children's literature, it would be worth knowing what good books are and starting to form a criterion. Magazines and specialized institutions make recommended lists that can be a good initial guide.
There are also objects on the market that pretend to be books or literature but are not. Coloring books, which teach reading or multiplication, word searches and crosswords are not literature, they have other purposes and do not necessarily build a reading community. Therefore, try to select books with literary content.
From the decalogue of the reading of Daniel pennac (a specialist in children's books) this is our favorite. We have the right not to read. Not to believe ourselves more important or better for reading. To leave a book in the middle if we don't like it, to start many books at the same time. To decide not to read seasonally. Reading, as well as any other human practice resides in the will, in the desire, and this also applies to young readers.
]]>The first time that an African American child starred in an illustrated album in the United States was only until 1963, the same year that Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech "I have a dream" in favor of the movement of civil rights and equality of African Americans saying no to racism.
In the context of the agitated struggles for the civil rights of African Americans, fought by Luther King, Malcom X and some years later the formation of the Black Panthers, the American publisher Viking Press, made a risky decision for the time: to publish a book for children with a protagonist of Afro origin.
The book we are talking about is "A day in the snow" (The Snowy Day) by Ezra Jack Keats, American illustrator, paradoxically white man, of Polish origin and author of one of the 20 most influential books in the United States.
It is surprising how late the presence of an African-American protagonist is in North American publishing history and it is surprising that 16 years earlier, in 1947, the Chilean publisher Rapa Nui published Cocorí, by the Costa Rican author Joaquín Gutiérrez. However, Cocorí has turned out to be a controversial book as it was pointed out by some activists as containing racist expressions and attitudes.
Racist or not, Cocorí was written at a time when the construction of Latin American identity looked only towards Europe and towards the invisible other races that make up our cultural wealth. Perhaps Cocorí is not a clear attempt to say no to racism, but it is without a doubt an interesting presence.
Although we can happily see that publishers (especially independent ones) have said no to racism, and that more and more children of different races take the leading role in children's books, the statistics still show a complex picture.
According to statistics from The Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin, of the 3,500 new titles they received in 2014, only 84 were authored by African-American authors and only 180 talked about issues related to the African-American community. But the outlook for Native American communities is worse. Of this same sample, only 20 were written by Native American authors and only 38 books spoke of issues related to these communities.
We leave this interesting picture taken from the CCBC page:
However, more and more independent publishers, writers and illustrators say no to racism, linking in their publications themes and characters of the different ethnic groups and cultures that make up the wealth of Latin American human geography.
A very white rabbit has fallen in love with a very black girl and wants to be as black as her. Every time the rabbit sees the girl, she asks what is your secret for being so bold? After many disappointments and experiments trying to be a black rabbit, he manages to discover the secret. Pretty Girl is a charming story by Brazilian author Ana María Machado, with fantastic illustrations by Rosana Faría.
Malaika She is an African girl, princess of a herd of elephants. On the journey through the savannah looking for the drinking fountains, Malaika He understands that memory is the key to the survival of elephants and he knows the sacred baobabs. Difficult days come when daddy elephant senses his death, then Malaika will have to face one of the most difficult trials. Malaika the princess is a book written and illustrated by Lizardo Carvajal, which opens the way to the theme of death as a necessary reflection in life.
In the town of Palenque, almost no one can read. Mr. Velandia, the owner of the store, is one of the few who knows. When Gina begins to receive letters, which she imagines of love, her little sister decides to learn to be able to read those mysterious letters ... An endearing story by the renowned author Irene Vasco about literacy, which comes to us from a remote town in Colombia.
Without words, with a realistic but poetic visualization, Jacinto and María José is a simple story about two children who like each other in a jungle region. In its pages, a candor close to magic emerges from Dipacho's illustrations, which evoke the oil paintings of Henri Rousseau.
We hope this article and the small selection of children's books that said no to racism were helpful. Dare to comment on this topic, still controversial, and share the article!
I got tired and surely, if you are reading this, it is because you are also tired of seeing your daughter run over and violated by so much stupidity. Why do few of us see this as a form of abuse? Well, tired of being asked, what is the problem with princess stories? I have decided to clearly write my political and literary position, but above all my position as a father.
Princess tales end when the story gets interesting. They usually end when the damsel is rescued, her spell is broken, and she marries a prince. There these stories end, generally, with a "happy ending."
But they really end there because most of those who write these stories are not interested in telling us what happens after the story ends.
We well know that princesses are born with two conditions: either they are born within the monarchy, or they are born outside of it. In both cases, a princess must always learn to be a princess. Because a boy by himself would be more of a tiger than a prince; I would be more bird than princess.
There is an initiatory moment in the lives of the princesses in which they are given the magical secret of being different girls from the rest, destined to be special. This is when every princess must learn very well that there is no princess without subjects; that there is no master without a slave; that there are people who are more important than others.
Princess tales never speak of the natural reluctance that a child has to accept that sad, adult idea that there are people more important than others. They never tell us about the indoctrination that princesses must undergo because, naturally, to be a true princess you have to learn to be a master.
You also learn to be a slave. For that you do not need other types of books. Princess books also serve (in fact that is their most important use) so that girls who are never going to be princesses learn to be good slaves while they yearn to be princesses.
And is that once you convince a child that the monarchy is fair, as an adult it is easy to convince her that any injustice is fair. It will be easy to convince him that it is normal that there are masters and that there are slaves.
Princess tales always begin when princesses are already princesses (or potentially princesses); occasionally tinged with rebellious princesses who question tradition and authority in a certain way, although, ultimately, none are willing to stop being princesses. Because when you are a princess you never want to give up being a princess.
What happens next we all know. Some spell of an evil witch, a castle, a prince who rescues her, an evil stepmother, a dragon and as a final destination, the formation of a family of nobles. But what happens once they are married is what nobody counts.
What no one has told you is that every princess becomes sad after being married. She has exchanged her freedom for living among dull and gray people. She has servants who do everything for her, to the point that she can no longer even laugh by herself. The prince and princess will learn to be very skinny or very fat and to be grumpy, because when they are kings it will be very important to be very fat or very skinny and above all very grumpy.
So there is not much to tell about a princess, for the life of the master is never as interesting as the life of a free man, and even the life of the slave. Princes and princesses are sad, gray, bored, and grumpy.
In the end, every princess and every prince become tyrants. They exert their power with rage against their subjects, as if they were guilty that princes and princesses lost the most precious good.
That's what the tales of princes and princesses never tell. Perhaps because those who write these stories like these ideas; the idea that there must be someone superior to send about others.
Don't read princess stories to girls, no tales of princes to boys (except The Little Prince) because they will learn to be a master or surely slaves. They'll learn that it's normal for there to be an exploiter and an exploiter. They'll be docile and easy to convince.
Tell them about the birds and the horses, who have no owner, who have no master, so that they may be rebellious and free. Because it is the free and rebels who change the world. Talk to the girls and boys about the most precious good: freedom.
They may not agree with many of these ideas, but that's what it's all about. If you have something to add, comment on, or contradict, leave us your comment.
If it was not because Fanuel Hanán Díaz He's so young (or appears to be) I'd feel comfortable calling him a scholar. But of course, when such a word is evoked, one imagines an arrogant old man. And that is exactly what Fanuel is not, who on the contrary, even though he can display readings, research, titles, awards and recognitions, instead prefers the simplicity of a good talk and sharing what he knows and is passionate about.
This time we bring LuaBooks readers this interview with the children's literature theorist and researcher, Fanuel Hanán Díaz, with whom we will talk about children's literature, books as a revelation, the responsibility of the editor, the encounter around reading, the school and the intermediaries of the promotion of reading and of course, we will talk about the book album and its future.
I remember the first time I had a book in my hands… In Venezuela there is a tradition of the baby Jesus who brings gifts to children. We were all the brothers taking out the packages, seeing the bicycle. When suddenly my grandmother told me I was missing a package. And I discovered that at the foot of my bed, wrapped in a simple and modest craft paper, was a package with two books: one was Peter Pan and the other was a version of The island of the treasure. And I believe that for me that gift was so powerful that from then on I felt something that I had never felt before: the need to read. And I remember they told us that we should go to sleep, but I wrapped myself in the sheet and with one of those big, heavy flashlights, at night, I kept reading the book because I wanted to finish it. And from there, those books in particular touched my soul in such a way that it made me a reader. It was like a revelation and I feel that this is what reading does in one, and in children especially, and it is to reveal yourself and discover something in you that perhaps you did not know existed.
I think so. Scottish librarian John Spink says something like "the right book should reach every reader at the right time." And for me that is one of the great truths that sustains the magic that makes a child in the appropriate contact with a specific book, become a reader. Therefore, one of the great responsibilities of mediators and one of the highest responsibilities of all adults who are as intermediaries in this reading process, is to help children find the books that suit them at those appropriate times. to change life forever.
Many times we say that books are faithful companions; sometimes we say that reading is like traveling but being in the stillness of your seat. I believe that these two things are fundamental. Because through reading I have traveled the depth of the earth; I have been in the mines of King Solomon, I have been in the perpetual snows, I have been lost in the jungles and I have also been shipwrecked with the Swiss Robinson and his family. And all of this has happened in the same place, in the same seat, in the same room. That ability to travel through reading, for me, is fundamental.
I feel that in the publishing market there is a saturation of poor quality books: books that could be completely expendable. There is a Brazilian writer who won the Hans Christian Andersen Award called Ana María Machado. One day I heard him say that the books should be worth at least the trees that are cut to make the pulp of the paper of that book. And I believe that when we become aware of how predatory human beings are, and think a little deeper about that high responsibility that publishers have, you'll have to question whether it's worth cutting down a tree that took seven years to grow, with a whole world of insects and bird's nests. You wonder if it's worth cutting it to make the pulp of a book really despicable and that you can throw it away, because nothing will happen if that book disappears. I think those are some of the questions an editor should ask himself.
I believe that there is a great responsibility of the publisher, especially in taking quality books and that means taking as much time as necessary. Books sometimes take a year or two to orchestrate those exceptionally quality texts and illustrations to conform to an ecosystem that has a lasting impact on the reader. I think that's an undisputed task that every editor should have, especially a children's literature editor.
The school demands a lot of news. And this leads to publishers sometimes embarking on unnecessary races against time and taking out books that are not mature and of dubious quality. And this is a basic problem for the reading training circuit. On the other hand, the school demands "knowledge acquisition" and that is why children's books are often surrounded by additional materials (guides and workbooks) that allow the teacher to meet the demands of the school. And of course, at the end of a reading in which your heart is throbbing because you were very excited, in which you connected with a character, in which you had an adventure, in which you discovered a mystery, in which you were afraid or maybe moved by emotion, obviously all that gain on a spiritual level, you kill it when you have to answer a series of questions. And that's really affecting the formation of the literary reader. I believe that the school should encourage the acquisition of knowledge around the language but that is what the books and readings included in the textbooks are for.
One of the most beautiful considerations of reading is that it is seen as a meeting place. A space that allows you, above all, conversation. I think that establishing a conversation around reading is one of the strategies that allow you that encounter. Many adults have the possibility of promoting this dialogue if they ask really valuable questions, if they ask intelligent questions, if they ask open questions about what that reading can arouse in the reader: around the opinions that this reading could have generated, around the feelings that reading may have generated in the reader and also around speculation. If we see reading as a theoretical model, a very interesting proposal is to see reading as a possibility of constantly building hypotheses. When you are a reader you always wonder about the fate of the characters or you go ahead to know what is going to happen; you always make inferences. There is an extremely rich territory to build possibilities for dialogue. So there are many possibilities of building the dialogue from what a book leaves as a living territory of information. Likewise, I believe that adults have to some extent a kind of baton, due to our developed capacity to understand the operation of signs. Adults can guide a process in which the child expresses how he feels that reading has touched him, the possible interpretations of a book, and the keys that can be revealed to reach a personal path to understand a book. That is why it is said that a book is as many readings as so many readers. I find a small essay by Aidan Chambers entitled “Tell me” fascinating, in which he proposes a methodology to establish this conversation, especially with young people. I think that is a very interesting, appropriate and intelligent way to make books settle in the spirit of a community of readers.
Currently the book album is the genre or category of book with the greatest presence in libraries, bookstores and in reading training spaces. The album book is basically characterized by maintaining a close relationship between text and illustration and its ultimate meaning is built from this interrelation. This means that there are many variables in this relationship. Sometimes the relationship is very close and other times very far. And in that gradation of distance and closeness between both codes, there are multiple possibilities in which not only text and illustration come into play, but also other elements such as layout, use of white space, typography that sometimes grows of size. That is why the album book is becoming a dynamic ecosystem, with many elements, as if it were a planetary system that is moving in invisible perfection, making this an interesting sense system to explore.
This complex ecosystem with these elements that form this invisible perfection, this cohesion, also implies that the reader commits himself to these elements vibrating and making sense for him and for the interpretation of the whole. That is why I consider that the album book makes a fundamental contribution to reading training, as it requires the reader to be participatory and to fill in part of the interpretation those interstices that are created in the dialogues of the different elements. Sometimes, directly, the reader has to intervene by touching or moving the book to make sense of it. But sometimes, in a less direct way, the reader has to "complete" and that is what makes the album book so sophisticated, since languages start to leave loose ends that must be completed and magically put together by a reader. smart and committed to finding meaning. I believe that this is why the album book is increasingly approaching, due to its usefulness and flexibility, new formats and new reading proposals, which will give it a much broader horizon and a very interesting future. It is a genre that has the ability to adapt, re-signify itself and make increasingly novel proposals.
Increasingly there is an Internet behavior, a few generations of digital natives who constantly browse many devices. The above has changed the perspectives of reading quite a bit. I imagine how reading could be in the future, digital reading, that reading that involves a whole number of elements that the physical book does not have, for example the multimodal, the sensory channels that are activated. An interactive digital book allows you to have music, video, and in turn, combine it with elements that imply that you touch a screen, that you act on a menu or a device for something to happen. And more and more you become an active participant, even a “co-author” of the story. And this enormously changes the possibilities of forming readers with other habits.
I am not one of those who predict that the physical book will die. It seems to me that the physical book has vigor, strength, it has a lot to tell. It will obviously change. If, for example, we look at the album books that were produced in the eighties and nineties, we can notice abysmal differences with the books that are being produced lately, which are more linked to the interactive world: their pages move and this implies that the reader manipulate and that before was not so typical of the album book. So I think languages start to mix and borrow from each other.
I regret that poetry is absent more and more. For me, poetry is fundamental in the reader's path and in the formation of other elements that narrative does not have. It seems as if the queen, the favorite, is the narrative. But poetry, which is that stillness and that exploration of feelings, is being lost as part of the future of the digital book and the printed children's book.
Theorist and researcher of children's literature, graduated in Letters from the Andrés Bello Catholic University. He was coordinator of the department of selection of books for children and young people of the Banco del Libro in Venezuela. Visiting professor in the Gretel Master's Degree in Children's Literature and author of the CERLALC virtual course on Creative Writing. Fellow of the Internationale Jugendbibliothek (Munich) to develop research on printing processes in old children's books. With the support of the French Embassy, he carried out research on Jules Verne's work in Amiens and Nantes. Editor of Barataria: Latin American children's and youth literature magazine.
Fanuel Hanán Díaz has been sworn in in children's literature in various international competitions. He was a jury of the Bratislava Biennial. He has conducted his talks and lectures in different countries in Europe and Latin America. Winner of the National Prize for Children's Literature and member of the IBBY Honor List, 2008.
What is the use of reading? It may sound like a pretty pragmatic question. That is why I want to share, from my personal experience, five reasons why it is worth reading. I invite you to talk about reading beyond its role in learning, of being a supposed transmitter of values or a tool to have better skills in this world of disagreements. Better I will speak of reading as one that produces a physical and psychological shudder quite similar to happiness.
Reading is a break from the hectic pace of daily life. It is, without a doubt, an activity that requires calm, one that sometimes we pursue at lunch or before bed, looking insistently at the cell phone and social networks as if in search of something unexpected that takes us out of the routine and in the end we go to bed tired and half empty of humanity, of meaning. We use the most incredible devices that technology has created for matters that do not fill us and we forget that for our fortune there are also books, in the form of apps, digital books and other formats that capture that emotion of striving to know something that we love and that requires more than 140 letters to satisfy us.
Adults with children and overwork know what calm is worth, which means meeting with themselves at some point in the day and being moved, angry or laughing out loud at the deepest or most trivial issues in life and that they meet with great effectiveness on the books. What is the use of reading? To find well-being.
I could almost assure you that the first encounter of the children of my generation with literature was not exactly through books. It will be a commonplace to say that a few years ago, we dislodged with little pain from our beds on weekends in search of the animated adaptations of the Brothers Grimm, or the fantastic narratives of "The Storyteller" and not because television in we liked ourselves, but because these particular stories had something inexplicable, an unsettling personal, almost private feeling, as if we were telling ourselves about our dreams in real life or a possible one. That magic is achieved by literature, the good one, the one that shakes the hearts of those who are close to it no matter the format in which it is presented.
It will be very strange to talk about television, its arch enemy, in a text about reading, but we will have to pause in this long dispute and recognize how this medium, many of us, allowed us to reach other texts that managed to recover that kind of paradise that over time we lost between the toils of the day and the indiscriminate consumption of entertainment. Valuing the printed format above the others is a limitation today where many have devices that can store thousands of books and that allow greater access. What is the use of reading? To know how to find literature, poetry wherever we go.
Rodari He said: “The total use of the word for everyone seems to me a good motto, with a beautiful democratic sound. Not so that everyone is an artist, but so that no one is a slave ”and I think Rodari was right, that he had found the little pea that hurt the princess of the classic tale under the mattresses, when he said these libertarian words, because he recognized how uncomfortable which can be reading and writing in a world that restricts, that it does not suit him that you think and say a lot and that he is also determined that you never have time.
In this overwhelming reality, literature for children or for adults (I prefer to think that there is no such literature for children but rather quality literature or not) turns out to be a way of loosening ourselves from chains, of seeing the world through the eyes of many people. , to leave the reality that has been prefabricated for us and enter the intimacy of others in order to draw our own conclusions. Ana María Machado, an admired author of children's books, said that the only solution to avoid alienation, the only story that ideology creates - referring to the one present in books - was diversity, the possibility of seeing many perspectives of the world and I would like to transfer that idea not only to books but to life in general. When we know more edges of a problem, when we know the causes and not only the effects, we are bolder, deeper and more critical. What is the use of reading? To think freely.
Reading I have seen more critical children grow up in libraries, schools, public spaces and homes, with more capacity for wonder and with better tools to live in this difficult world that we build. Children who hurt more for the other, who know the world more, who are more clear about their participation as citizens and as brothers, because through books they built their subjectivity, a personality full of voices and experiences than with words and images they filled their world with cultural references, emotions and realities that made them more human, happier. Some time ago I heard that there is no safer place than a book and despite all the counterarguments that occur to me at the time, I could assure you that yes, there would be no safer place to learn about death, about sexuality , of love, war and friendship than a story that happens to another, but that happens inside us, when we identify ourselves, when we put ourselves in the shoes of the other and fill ourselves with ideas and words to face what we know and what not yet. What is the use of reading? To recognize myself and others.
Happiness is sometimes sold in bottles, trips, objects, or diplomas, but sometimes happiness is given by reading aloud from a public library; in family spaces such as the Globo Restaurant - workshop where books inspire the shape of food or family reading workshops are held and in many other settings for the ideas that books mobilize. In the smile of children when they are moved by an image, a phrase or an action of a character, when reading is not only about me but about the affection that I give to a little one. All that remains is to find the time to accompany the children to find the books in a less directed way –school- and more organic, such as at the bus stop, a restaurant, the park. That children see their parents read and talk about what they read at dinner, we are sure, is more effective than language classes.
That happiness does not become a silly excuse to justify the need to read more in a country that lacks reading tests and other measures of the impossible. Visit the libraries, read as a family, give a birthday book, read yourself and then worry about your child reading - like in airplanes, you must first put on the oxygen mask to help others. - Happiness exists and it exists in opposition to sadness. It is paradoxical how we identify the second so effectively and the first slips from our hands from time to time. Don't let her go.
]]>My age is not an age for giving advice. Much less advice about literature and much, much less, about children's literature and how to write children's stories. I say this because I believe that of all types of literature, it has been children's literature that has raised the simplest and at the same time the deepest issues of human existence.
Let me just share with you some ideas, which might be useful for those interested in writing children's literature; simple ideas derived from my work and that perhaps could be ideas of how to write stories for children.
One of the things I try to watch out for is childishness in language. That is, one thing is children's literature and another is infantilism, which treats the child as someone who cannot understand or who is limited in some way. Never underestimate the abilities of children.
I think that when you write for children, you have to think that you are really writing for wise men. How to talk to a little girl or a little sage? That's the tricky thing about writing for kids. Perhaps it is the great challenge of children's literature to find the appropriate tone to speak to such venerable beings.
The topic? Well life. Discoveries. There is always a moment in life when one discovers things for the first time. And I think that's what children's literature should be: a treasure, a source of discoveries for children. So the subject can be any ... whatever life is. Other subjects outside of that would interest a wise person?
Talk to the children about what you really believe in; of what is truly wonderful for you. And let your own amazement flood the children's eyes. If you write about something that is not amazing to you, you will hardly be able to surprise someone, not even an adult. To amaze anything goes: give voice to animals, give life to objects, create new worlds if necessary. If something is small, make it very small. If something is big then describe it as giant. Add an extra leg, or a third eye if necessary, but when you tell it, tell it from the heart, tell it as telling your truth and little by little you will discover how to write stories for children.
I particularly discard the issues that have to do with superheroes, ghosts, gods, even the ancestral ones. I've never felt good talking to children about those things that I don't believe in; It has always seemed a bit immoral to me. With children you have to be honest and it is not fair to talk to them about things or even values in which we really do not believe.
But if instead you are libertarian, anti-authoritarian, make your stories speak of what you are. You do the world a great favor by making libertarian stories. You do great good by giving the world less obedience and more rebellion. Don't be afraid to talk about freedom in your stories. Outside there are many adults with fear of freedom that surround children. Don't be one more. Your stories may offend some of those adults or say that your stories are too strong for a child. But I have good news for you: children are not offended by freedom.
Indoctrinating tales are a failure. They're terrible... Even if his message has goodwill and is disguised among the verdicts of history, a moderately critical reader will be able to know what a story was written for. For example... books to learn how to go to the bathroom... books to love God... books to learn the name of vowels, etc. They work well as educational cards... but they're far from childish literature. In short: no indoctrines, it simply counts and little by little you will discover how children's stories are written.
To know how to write you have to know how to delete. Write and delete as many times as necessary. The school places special emphasis on writing... but little to erase. And it's critical to do so. Change the order, move, go from front to back, paraphrase. It's not always better as you first wrote it.
The dough is left to rest to make a good bread. When you write, pull him as far as you can. if it doesn't give you more don't write anymore. Hold on. Return to the text when you deem it necessary and read it as if it were the first time you read it. If you're capable, forget you wrote it yourself.
Read aloud. If possible, record it as if some narrator told it. And this is very
important: if reading does not flow aloud, much less silent reading will flow. Rewrite, remove the unnecessary, debug and add where it is missing. Tell the story to others without reading the story. A good story can be summed up as you sometimes tell a good movie to someone who hasn't seen it.
When you feel like you're done, start another story, as Cherezada told her stories so she wouldn't die. Keep writing for a thousand and one nights or more.
I hope that these tips on how to write children's stories will be useful for all those who are interested in dedicating their time and work to children's literature.
Photography by: JeremyOK. Flickr. Creative Commons.
]]>Difference between ebook and electronic book, as well as what are interactive books, is one of the most frequently asked questions. And it is not surprising, since the migration of books to digital formats is a really recent phenomenon.
Throughout history, the book has gone through different types of media. From the first clay tablets with cuneiform writing, passing through parchments, papyri, the codex book and digital media, books and reading have always evolved with respect to the technological possibilities of each moment.
But to understand ebook and electronic book and what is an application book, we must first talk about eReaders.
An eReader is an electronic device that allows the reading of an eBook or electronic book. Its design can be specialized in reading or it can fulfill other tasks, such as tablets and computers.
exist eReaders specialized in reading electronic books such as Kindle, Nook or Kobo. That is, they are made initially, just to read e-books. These tablets allow the reading of an electronic book through screens that emulate the opaque appearance of paper.
However, there are other types of eReaders that are not specialized, but that also serve us as digital supports, such as tablets, smartphones and computers, which were the first supports of the modern electronic book.
Now that we are clear about what an eReader is, we can understand a little better what the difference is between ebook and electronic book. In short, there is no difference, since electronic book is the Spanish form of the English contraction eBook, which means “electronic book”.
Now that we know that there is no difference between ebook and electronic book, we can explore the types of eBooks that exist.
They are digital books that link text and graphics in a flat way and interaction with the text is minimal. They depend on a reading software.
This format allows linking multimedia elements that are a little more advanced compared to the flat book. In them the interactivity is greater. They depend on a reading software.
This type of book allows a very broad multimedia development, since it links audio, animation, video, interactions, they are linked to social networks, etc. They do not depend on software because they are themselves software, that is, an application.
I leave you a graph that we have prepared for you, with the differences between the different types of books.
I hope this post will serve you and give you key information if you thought there was a difference between ebook and electronic book. As you realized there is no other difference between ebook and electronic book that one word is in English and the other is an expression in Spanish.
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