“La parola ai bambini”: voci d’infanzia dall’archivio storico dell’Internationale Jugendbibliothek

This work aims at bringing back to light infantile testimonies over the education to reading experience held at Munich’s International Jugendbibliothek in the nineteen fifties, which are now kept in its historical archive. It is believed that an analysis of such sources, performed with all due caution, may indeed broaden the outlook on the topic, moving from an adult critical evaluation on the children’s literature’s production to an appreciation of the existing youth’s critical thinking and the shaping process of its critical reflection. Furthermore, the dialogue these texts may establish with the ‘Public History of Education’ represents a unique occasion to put forward a narration of last century’s educational practices to the contemporary educating community, in the schooling or children’s library field. As well, it might valorize children’s traces throughout time more effectively, by putting under the spotlight the identity, the interests and reading taste of young readers in the second half of the nineteenth century - while observating new possible patterns