Travel literature in Primary Education: a didactic tool for female empowerment and environmental awareness

Abstract

This article proposes the use of children's and young people's travel novels as a useful resource within the framework of Royal Decree 157/2022, of 1 March, which establishes the organisation and minimum teaching requirements for Primary Education, specifically, the exit profile of students and their competence approach. Based on an analysis of the curricular elements decreed, two recent works of the aforementioned sub-genre are studied, both by the award-winning writer for children and young people Andrea Maceiras Lafuente: A folla azul and Alma de elefante. The journeys of their heroines, both set in the destruction of two jungles, made the novels they feature winners of the Merlin Award 2020 and the Anaya Award 2022, respectively. The study of the works carried out stars from the sub-genre of travel literature and a specific narrative structure, that of the quest, to docus on the type of protagonists who lead these stories, in this case, two girls who embody some of the main values set by the Sustainable Development Goals to which the Exist Profile for Primary School pupils is largely intended to respond. The aim of this study is to validate the isea that Literature and reading are the appropriate instruments for the education proposed by the LOMLOE in a transversal competence approach.