Thresholds of change in children’s literatureThe symbol of the mirror

  1. Sergio Arlandis 1
  2. Agustín Reyes Torres 1
  1. 1 Universitat de València
    info

    Universitat de València

    Valencia, España

    ROR https://ror.org/043nxc105

Journal:
NAER: Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research

ISSN: 2254-7339

Year of publication: 2018

Issue Title: Universities in the digital age: challenges and opportunities

Volume: 7

Issue: 2

Pages: 125-130

Type: Article

DOI: 10.7821/NAER.2018.7.275 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: NAER: Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research

Abstract

This article approaches the study of children’s literature as a threshold of change that allows readers to explore the reality around them, imagine other worlds and understand other perspectives. Based on the notion of the child’s cognitive development organized into four stages ―pre-reading, fantastic stage, fantastic-realistic stage and aesthetics stage― reading becomes a resource to combine fantasy and experience where the mirror is a highly suggestive element and prone to hundreds of interpretations and applications as can be seen in the plots of well-known books such as the brother Grimm’s Snow White, Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Michael Ende’s The Neverending story and J.K. Rowling’s The Philosopher’s Stone, among others. As a result, as young readers go from one stage to another, the mirror gains greater symbolic complexity and they face the discovery of the self and the other as well as the confrontation between the so-called primary and secondary worlds, reality and the marvelous.

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