Enseñando a sentir

This book explores the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in children’s fiction by focusing on topics considered “difficult” or “controversial” according to current considerations of what would be appropriate for children. Macarena García González critically examines the premise that children’s literature serves to learn about emotions by questioning the adult epistemologies and conservative apprehensions that underlie when books are used to teach how to feel. In eight chapters, it explores different themes such as empathy, violence, xenophobia, death, migration, gender and poverty, among others, in children’s books, film animations and in the discourses and practices that appear from different institutions that shape children’s cultural consumption. The question that weaves throughout the volume is how certain emotional repertoires that are offered and favoured in children’s fiction are intertwined with inequalities and exclusions in contemporary society.