Stories of resilience and freedom. Re-reading dictatorships through picturebooks

Abstract

In recent years, resorting to metaphor, children’s narratives with the strength of words and the beauty of images, have addressed complex, delicate, uncomfortable topics, freeing themselves from the pedagogical-moralistic and ideological conditioning present in many stories produced for and about dictatorships. This contribution, therefore, proposes a reflection on a selection of picturebooks that, between past and present, have given voice to childhood, cultivating memory and encouraging the assumption of a critical-reflective posture. Stories where childhood, though deprived, managed to be resilient and to be protagonist of History, as in La crociata dei bambini, with tributes to exemplary figures such as Korczak and Levi, to reaffirm the values of solidarity and brotherhood. The aim is to valorize narratives as a pedagogical device to create educational paths to support and protect democratic processes and individual and collective freedoms.