Libros, lectores y lectura en la literatura infantil y juvenil: Personajes analfabetas y “abyectos”

The presence of books, readers and reading in children’s and young adult literature is more common than we think and yet books where the act of reading appears as something more than a tool to obtain information are in a minority. The presence or absence of these representations are indicators of the way in which society contructs the relationship between children and young people and reading. This article analysis a group of texts where the theme of becoming literate is linked to characters who can be described as “abject” according to the work of Julia Kristeva (1982), in this case, children and young people who live on the margins of society, in the street or in the rubbish dump. The consequences of learning to read are not always those we imagine given they have the power to subvert oppressive authority. This article also refers to the Project “Reading Fictions” within which this study took place.