As arenas políticas na transição do PNBE - 2014 ao PNLD Literário - 2022

Abstract

This article analyzes public policies for the acquisition and distribution of children’s books in Early Childhood Education, examining the transition from the 2014 call for proposals of the National School Library Program (PNBE) to the 2022 National Textbook and Instructional Materials Program (PNLD). Based on documentary analysis, it discusses how distinct conceptions of childhood and literature are embodied in these normative documents, revealing disputes within decision-making arenas. In the 2014 PNBE, literature is understood as artistic production and a cultural asset, situated within the field of children’s rights, ensuring aesthetic diversity, qualified authorship, and a plurality of discursive genres and graphic projects. From this perspective, access to literary texts is not subordinated to instructional purposes; rather, it affirms the right to symbolic experience, imagination, and aesthetic enjoyment. By contrast, the 2022 PNLD adopted criteria that linked literature to literacy targets and school expectations associated with academic outcomes, subordinating it to normative pedagogical objectives. This shift reflects a change in the nature of the policy, which, although remaining distributive, assumed a strong regulatory bias by redefining selection parameters and circumscribing the symbolic and artistic potential of books to pedagogical purposes external to the literary field. The study draws on Capella (2016), Lowi (1966), and Kingdon (1997), understanding public policy formulation as a space of contestation among political and conceptual coalitions. By highlighting the tensions between the DCNEI (Brazil, 2009), the BNCC-EI (Brazil, 2017), and the 2022 PNLD call for proposals, the analysis argues that children’s literature constitutes an inalienable cultural right and a constitutive dimension of the Early Childhood Education curriculum, not reducible to an instrument of early schooling.