From the Production of Children’s Books to Literary Reading Practices: The Aesthetic Ecosystem of Children’s Literature

Abstract

This article proposes a discussion of children’s literature from a relational perspective that articulates editorial production, book materiality, and school reading practices as interdependent dimensions of the same cultural phenomenon. We begin from the understanding of children’s book production as a cultural and aesthetic practice, considering the authorial, editorial, and graphic choices that configure the book in its material and symbolic singularity. The study adopts a qualitative approach grounded in bibliographic research, deepening the notion of verbo-visual-material architecture as an epistemological field of analysis. Text, image, and material support are examined as interconnected narrative instances, understood as operating jointly in the construction of meaning. The article also problematizes the aesthetic experience of reading within the school context, emphasizing the role of teacher mediation, curricular organization, and the systematic nature of pedagogical practices in structuring readers’ formative trajectories. Based on these reflections, the concept of the Aesthetic Ecosystem of Children’s Literature is proposed as a relational paradigm for reader formation, conceiving literature as a dynamic network of interdependencies among production, book architecture, mediation, and reception. It is concluded that reader formation requires not only access to books but also the establishment of cultural and pedagogical conditions that ensure meaningful and emancipatory aesthetic experiences, broadening the perspective on the book as an object and on the processes that sustain its experience within the school context.