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Children's Literature in Education

, Volume 45, Issue 4, pp 271–284 | Cite as

Innocence is No Defense: Politicized Childhood in Antonio Skármeta’s La composición/The Composition

Winner of the 2013 Children’s Literature in Education Emerging Scholar Award
  • Niall Nance-Carroll
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

Chilean author Antonio Skármeta’s picture book The Composition (2000), illustrated by Alfonso Ruano, focuses on the political involvement of 9-year-old Pedro. This essay brings together Maria Nikolajeva’s concept of aetonormativity and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s concept of childism to examine how The Composition troubles normative assumptions regarding children’s political action and reflects necessary changes in how children are regarded. Pedro’s political actions are not grounded in an established political ideology, nor do they result from advice from adults. Rather, Pedro’s parents naively attempt to reinforce the idea that childhood is an apolitical status—this despite the dictatorship’s willingness to exploit children’s assumed lack of political knowledge. Uniting literary critics with psychological and political criticism, this essay insists on the necessity of literature that recognizes children’s political activities and responsibilities. Such literature should not be exclusively directed toward children who are victims of injustice, nor should it deny that those children involved in political action are still children; ascription of an honorary adult status to young political actors may serve to further marginalize specific children as well as children as a class.

Keywords

Aetonormativity Childism Dictatorship Politics Picture book 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.English DepartmentIllinois State UniversityNormalUSA

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