Children's literature as a problematic theoretical category: Perry Nodelman's perspective

Abstract

This contribution is intended to illustrate the critical perspective of the Canadian scholar Perry Nodelman, whose decades-long reflection on the epistemological status of children's literature took the form of a triptych: Words about Pictures (1988), The Pleasures of Children's Literature (2002) and The Hidden Adult (2008). The focal point of the discourse will be precisely this last work, enlightening from a methodological point of view, where Nodelman focuses on certain 'markers' that allow us to recognise the works belonging to that complex, elusive and problematic theoretical category that we call 'children's literature'.