Children’s Literature and ComDev

Abstract: What role can, or do, children’s literature play in development communication? Recently, neotonous childlike curiosity and creativity has become a research and development strategy and a trendy corporate culture for companies like Google. Including children in decision making and in the search for development solutions – PDC& PR4D – is also being advocated by the U.N. and Plan International especially with regards to issues that affect children.This paper will explore how children’s books open spaces for dialogic communication with children by examining how we define them, how we speak about them, how we speak for them, how we speak to them and how they may talk back through children’s texts.The aim is to relate elements of traditional storytelling to modern forms of dialogic communication and, by extension, to development goals: “helping adults understand children’s issues through their lens” (Commissioner for Children, Tasmania).