A Gazeta Infantil e as contribuições da literatura na formação do pequeno leitor (1929-1930)

Abstract

This text aims to investigate how the Gazeta Infantil supplement, found in tabloid format in the newspaper A Gazeta, published issues related to children's literature during its first phase of circulation (1929-1930). We intend to highlight the contributions of the supplement to the flowering and solidification of Brazilian children's literature and the formation of new readers. This occurred at a time when the interests of a new urban mass were important, driven mainly by the process of immigration and incipient industrialization. To this end, we take as a research source, the first 57 editions of the Gazeta Infantil supplement that were published between 1929 and 1930. Thus, we identified several conceptions of childhood, from the innocent child, ignorant "tacky", dirty, rude, lazy, disobedient and evil, that needed to be conducted and educated to transform society and meet the auspices of economic, political and social development to the sacralized child, idealized in the romantic way. In other words, that child studious, obedient, kind, zealous, religious, clean and educated, polished enough to ensure the growing process of modernization that lived the Brazilian homeland.