Letteratura per l’infanzia, visual literacy e contaminazioni artistiche

The visual dimension is very important in children’s lives, especially nowadays given that modern society bombards children and adolescents with visual stimuli. Although images have a stronger communicative impact on young people than the written word, few teachers and educators employ resources and educational spaces that foster the critical, visual, aesthetic and artistic competences that would help their pupils become careful observers and critical users. This essay presents an educational experiment conducted by the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology at the University of Padua. It involved three-to-fourteen-year-olds from the Veneto region’s schools and was based on a multidisciplinary approach that intertwined children’s illustration, history of contemporary art and visual education. The result was an original illustrated horn-book that reinterprets twenty-six contemporary works of art. The horn-book was also converted into a portable interactive art installation to be enjoyed at school.