El centro de la tierra (Lectura e infancia)

Abstract

The present review studies Jorge Monteleone’s El centro de la tierra (Reading and Childhood), where moving autobiographical stories are threaded with reflections on the brightness of contact with the cosmos of books in childhood. It is a book that in its first part traces the links that the author intends to uncover between childhood and reading, and then focuses on the memories of the author’s childhood between the 1950s and 1960s , the vivacity of what was felt by accessing his father’s small library or by playing with his cousin Hugo in the courtyard of his grandparents in the town of Morón. In the book reverberates both the instant return of the first readings as discovery and enabling it to occur again and the impossibility of reaching it fully. As a whole, it is an inescapable book, either to study the historical construction of children, the history of books and magazines (and publishing houses) for children in Argentina since the second half of the twentieth century, to elucidate child care practices from reading or to ask about such issues in the contemporary scene.