Of stories to overcome fear and poems under the bed or on children's literature at the time of Covid-19

Abstract

Children’s literature is a valuable instrument to tell boys and girls about the world. Those who write for childhood know well that between the lines of the stories that are intended to him the child gaze can find its own reality, itself, its thoughts, its fears, but also, “saving”, the words to tell and to come to terms with its world. Those who have written for childhood during the last year have done so with the awareness of having to tell at a time when the very boys and girls were paying the biggest expenses of the pandemic from Covid-19, forced into forced isolation, depriving them of the opportunity to live their childhood to the full. What, then, did writers have the urgency to tell? The paper will try to answer this question, analyzing critically the characters and stories proposed in the catalogues of some important Italian publishing houses for children.