The literary education of children and youths. Parallel dialogue between Joan Triadú and Carles Riba

Abstract

A good literary education is one of the goals that the teacher, critic, and pedagogue Joan Triadú worked towards intensely in his professional and intellectual life. He has left a strong mark of this in his written oeuvre, which when traced offers different points of connection with other activists, pedagogues and intellectuals who were also concerned with how to provide good literature to children and youths. One of them is Carles Riba, who also felt called to build and reinforce the reading scene when the country was still bereft of publications targeted at young readers. It is striking how Riba and Triadú established a kind of parallel dialogue that converges in different aspects and conceptions around what a book for a young audience should be like and what universal works of literature should be available at schools and how. This is the topic of this small tribute to Joan Triadú on the centennial of his birth.