The Encounter between Biology and Literature in Children’s Novels. An Interdisciplinary Proposal

Abstract

The need to be surrounded by stories, through a continuous production of and listening to narrations, is a distinctive feature of humankind. Even biology, although part of the Natural Sciences, is a discipline that “tells stories”, because it has to do with time, with the relationships between organisms and with the depths and transformations of life. Starting from the assumptions of a reading pedagogy that promotes the pleasure of reading among children, without the aim to educate and conform, the purpose of this contribution is to bring out a specific didactic potential scattered throughout children’s novels, to propose interdisciplinary learning-teaching paths in biology at school by including children’s literature in science classes.

Keywords

• children’s literature
• biology education
• narration
• reading pedagogy
• interdisciplinarity