That is fun theaches

the debates of the national children's literature commission (1936-1938)

Abstract

In 1936, the Minister of Education, Gustavo Capanema, created the National Commission for Children’s Literature in order to establish public policies with regards to the formation of young readers. This paper aims to question what the National Commission for Children’s Literature, created by the New State government in 1936, conceptually understood as its objective. We analyzed documents found at CPDOC/FGV and discussed the criteria used by that Commission in distinguishing what was literary among the writings for children. We observed that, although the entertaining criteria were first stressed as characteristic of children’s literature, the pedagogic was not excluded as its main component, and in the end it was considered to be decisive. In fact, the ideological concepts concerning children’s literature – nationalism, utilitarianism, among others – are used in the evaluations performed by the CNLI.