Per un'educazione giovanile europea alla lettura: "Il Premio Europeo Città di Caorle (1962-1968)"

The «European Award City of Caorle» was held from 1962 to 1968 and gave start to a qualified international debate on the children's literature. Giuseppe Flores d'Arcais and Anna Maria Bernardinis, scholars in science of education at the University of Padua, promoted a dialectic debate between scholars from various countries to encourage the best works of youth literature and to offer critic guidelines because they wanted to create an European education for young readers. Based on extensive archival unpublished, the essay reconstructs the developments of the Prize, outlines the relations between international institutions, including the IBBY, in the various editions shows the critical assessments on the literary works. The desire to improve the future of Europe from the literature and the love on reading youth, allowed to structure a network of European cultural studies and the circulation of works. These reasons allowed Italy to overcome self position in literary criticism and they gave a decisive contribution in the development of the epistemological status of children’s literature.