.
The Editorial Norma stand is not just another point of sale established at the Book Fair. There are always interactive proposals that invite you to participate. This year, based on the iIdea ““A culture of peace from school”, the novelty was a booknook giant that allows you to get inside the tree of peace, take a photo that will be uploaded to the networks and in this way you can participate in a raffle for a book from the publisher.
Through the project “A culture of peace from school” that began last year and will be the axis on which work will be done in 2024, Editorial Norma “seeks to bring books and activities to the classrooms that put the modes of in which we relate with the objective of building a new culture that denatures and reverses violence.”
The term “peace” as understood by Norma is much more than the absence of war, “it is a value that implies well-being, a state of tranquility, stability, which can be presented at various levels: personal, social and the politician”.
Laura Linzuain, editorial director of Norma, spoke with Argentinian time about the collections that were launched and that have peace in its different expressions as their axis.
Editorial Norma and books for peace
Norma has various collections that are framed within the axis of contributing to peace from the classroom. One of them, says Laura Linzuain “is the collection Good nightwhich “is designed as those books that accompany children to the edge of the bed when their parents, siblings or mother sit with them to read them the goodnight story.”
They are large volumes, 21 X 24 in full color. “In general, they are books – he remarks – in which the illustration has a lot to say”.
A book from that collection is He tree who knew how to count by Martín Blasco with illustrations by Miranda Rivadaneira. A frightened kitten climbs up the tallest tree in the garden and they begin to talk to him. The tree makes the kitten talk about the situation she is going through: she lived quietly in a house and, suddenly, the family expanded and two other cats appeared and stole her places to sleep, eat, sunbathe.
The tree tells him that it is a very nice story with an ugly ending, so he tells him that same story, but with other possibilities: maybe those cats are also scared and maybe they can learn to live together and sleep all together and warm.
Then there are other collections made up of Towers and each tower has a color and the illustrations are also colored.
“La Torre Roja is the collection for children ages 7 and up. This collection includes Welcome Malku!, by Margarita Mainé with illustrations by Rocío Alejandro, says Linzuain.
“Torre Azul is intended for children aged 9 and up. In this case the book that we have within the project is The teachings of the Fut Gol masterby Javier Aguirre with illustrations by María Lavezzi.”
“There is an Orange Tower for which we have not made a book for the project and then there is the Yellow Tower which are the books intended for children from 11 years old. In this case, we have edited a novel by Paula Bombara called Muralists with illustrations by Rodrigo Folgueira.”
“There is the collection for young people called Zona Libre. It is made up of youth novels that are, above all, but not only, realistic novels that deal with topics of interest among young people. In this case the collection book for the project is When the cherry trees bloomby Liliana Cinetto.
“When in the books from the Torres collection created by Editorial Norma – Linzuain clarifies – we indicate an age, it is only a suggestion because, in general, the mediators ask us what age each book is for. This is approximate because perhaps a child who reads a book from Torre Amarilla can also read one from Zona Libre. A 9-year-old boy can access, if he likes, a Red Tower book. The data on ages are only guidelines for mediators:”
And he adds: “The books have as their framework the project of a culture for peace, but in no way do they have a pedagogical aspect. “They are fictions, they are novels for children.”
“For example, ¡Welcome, Malku! -he says- is a novel, which has just been awarded in Los Destacados by the Association of Children’s and Youth Literature of Argentina (ALIJA). “
“Editorial Norma’s project on a culture of peace seeks to bring books to the classroom that bring into debate the ways in which we relate, to build a culture that denatures the violence for which the school is a sounding board. ”
But the books, regardless of whether they are framed within this project, have a literary value in themselves. In this regard he also cites as an example When the cherry trees bloom.
“Liliana Cinetto, its author, writes from a trip to Japan during which she visits the city of Hiroshima. She is very moved when she knows the zero point where the bomb falls and she begins to investigate and then writes this novel where she narrates this terrible tragedy and the story of one of the people who was linked to one of the victims who arrives in Argentina. . The story of Hiroshima will appear in a descendant who studies in high school in Argentina.”
“Then we know this counterpoint between the story of the bombing and a situation of violence that occurs within the classroom in an Argentine school, from which the school directors propose to the children to investigate and do work that shows the damage. that has generated violence in people throughout the history of humanity.”
“This novel tells a moving story that links two seemingly very distant types of violence. Take large-scale violence, one of the antitheses of the word peace, which is war. “The author wrote it with a strictly literary sense and we included it in the project.”
The various aspects of peace
Another aspect that the collection addresses is that no culture is superior to another and all can coexist in harmony. Welcome, Malku! It has to do with that topic. “This,” says the editor, “is a novel that I commissioned Margarita Mainé and that she wrote from her perspective as a writer.”
“The character of Malku already existed within our catalogue. He is a boy who lived at the foot of the Cerro de Siete Colores and in this book what happens to him is that he must leave his hometown because his family, which is very large, cannot support itself, he has to come to the big city and then Malku becomes in an internal migrant.”
“This child has knowledge that will enrich the rest of the children because he is a bilingual child who speaks Quechua and Spanish.”
And he adds: “Today, in Argentine schools there are not only children who come from other areas of the country, but also from other countries like Russia.”
“The teachings of the Fut Gol Master It is a book with a character who has been teaching that game for 1,1000 years. It is a humorous book, of course. And then what he does is narrate different stories in 11 stories. “Sport is an activity that promotes work in favor of coexistence and in favor of a culture of peace.”
“In Muralists -Linzuain reports- we take art as our axis, which is an experience that allows us to observe other cultures, distancing ourselves from prejudices and, in addition, it also allows us to bond through other languages that are not always words.
“For this book – he continues – we have the help of an advisor, Héctor Barreiro, who is a specialist in peace education and who has been a Geography teacher throughout his life and then the director of a secondary school. The teaching of artistic activities is widely used with boys and girls who have faced situations of armed violence both in the East and in Colombia.”
The novel tells four stories of four young people, all of them going through some problem related to adolescence or problems related to the family: addictions, complex family economic situations, separations from parents or childhood friends.
“The good thing about this novel, furthermore, is that it opens up a whole street world for us, from cave paintings to Quinquela Martín or the great Cándido López.”
“We believe that peace – Linzuain concurs – is much more than the opposite of war. It is a state of well-being, of tranquility in which it is possible to be personally but also socially and politically. We would like this project to allow the concept of a culture of peace to be installed, which goes beyond peace, which is not something utopian, but rather achievable.”
