Narrating Dictatorship for Childhood. Images that Smuggle Meanings

Children’s literature and media presents a privileged field to explore the reproduction of social discourses and consensus. In this article, we approach four works recommended by critics and mediators: the picturebooks La composición, Camino a casa and Un diamante en el fondo de la tierra, and the short film “Bear Story”. In these four texts, the interplay of the verbal and the visual makes references to political violence in Latin America. Assisted by visual theories —and by the category of image modality introduced by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen—, I analyze how these texts narrate dictatorship avoiding the remembrance of violence. The ideological analysis is complemented with reflections elaborated upon reader responses of primary education teachers as well as children obtained in reading workshops organized in Santiago de Chile