ALFABETO SOBRE
LA LITERATURA INFANTIL
(CHILDREN'S LITERATURE FROM A TO Z)
Text by Bernardo Atxaga
Illustrations by Alejandra Hidalgo
ISBN: 84-930221-3-6
104 pp.
PVP: 15'03 euros

Children's literature is a river and Bernardo Atxaga has travelled its course from A to Z, by boat and on foot. This text, originally a conference offered by its author to a group of teachers, can be read and enjoyed by anyone. It includes enough clues and storylines to give one a good time and the chance to remove many prejudices which affect the way children'sliterature has been, and still is considered.

The illustrator, Alejandra Hidalgo is an admirer of Lewis Carroll's curious Alice and Raymond Queneau's impudent Zazie, and has had the time of her life drawing each of the letters and turning the G for Brothers Grimm into a double nose, the F for Fable into a half-eaten cow and the J for Jaimito into a hook worthy of Moby Dick.

The alphabet comes complete with a biography of Joseba Irazu, Bernardo Atxaga's real name, where readers may find out how he started out as a writer.

"When speaking about children's literature, most of the weight should fall on the second term in the phrase, on the strictly literary aspect. If the contrary is the case, if we start delineating domains, if it is considered that the word "children" carries more weight than everything else and that writing for children is a specific field in itself, then we could be in trouble".
(B. Atxaga)

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