There are issues that are difficult to address in children’s literature. But, at the same time, children’s literature can be the best resource to deal with them effectively, with a careful combination of subtlety and capacity for conviction. The editorial Bellaterra has published ‘Sola en el bosque’, the story in which the Argentine authors Magela Demarco and Caru Grossi raise the problem of sexual abuse and violence in the home, a question “that makes you uncomfortable, angry and hurts” but that at the same time they consider unavoidable.
‘Sola en el Bosque’: children’s literature that teaches
“The biggest challenge was talking about child sexual abuse without naming it. Hence the resource of the human wolf and the house that, when everyone goes to work, turns into a dark and gloomy forest”.
The cover and two illustrations of ‘Sola en el bosque’
The book is accompanied by a reading guide with questions “that function as triggers to address the story” and that highlight some important concepts suggested by the text: “That love does well and that, if something does not do well or makes us feel bad, it is not love; that if they don’t like something or don’t want to do it, they can say “no”; or the issue of secrets, those that can be kept and those that cannot”.
