Poemas para crianças e adolescentes em programas escolares e universitários?

Abstract

The programs and goals for Portuguese in Elementary and Secondary Schools indicate, concerning literary education, from the 7th grade onwards, only so-called poets for adults, in the expectation that students thus acquire linguistic and literary maturity. Also the programs of Portuguese Literature or Foreign Literature taught at Portuguese Universities, do not indicate poets who wrote or write for children or teenagers assuming that the regression to texts written for "younger" ages is inappropriate. Several questions arise: Are poems written for children or teenagers aesthetically inferior to the lyrical texts written for adults? Are texts in verse intended for children and teenagers (still) poems? Do such texts deserve to be read in Elementary and Secondary schools? Taking as paradigm the poem Consulta, by Maria Alberta Menéres, this essay intends to show that poems primarily intended for children or teenagers reveal, under apparently rudimentary content and form, an exquisite poetic construction, refining thought and sensibility of young and adult readers.