Children’s rights and citizenship values in a book selection for young readers

Abstract

This study is contextualised in the field of how children’s literature can help to spread awareness of children’s rights. It is intended to determine the ethical values most present in a specific corpus and their relationship with children’s rights and citizenship education. In achieving this objective, the results and discussion break new ground in the literary and social fields because they provide answers to help understand the role of children’s literature in a world that needs the engagement of young citizens. The method adopted is a convergent parallel mixed one, as it collects and merges quantitative data, obtained from reading 264 fiction and non-fiction books for 0–12-year-olds, and qualitative data by assigning 39 values to the books. This data is then interpreted using a validated data collection instrument. The introduction and the theoretical framework are based upon literary cognitive criticism and democratic education to encourage children to participate in society and become critical citizens.