Abstract
Books offer materials suitable for reflection and analysis, allowing readers to exercise decision-making and problem-solving. The power of literary texts to make readers experience emotions, to present different situations and behaviors to them and even to get them to face their fears and concerns, makes reading a privileged instrument for bullying and cyberbullying prevention. In this chapter, we analyze how literary texts may contribute to moral education of readers and how books can help teachers, parents, and practitioners dealing with bullying and cyberbullying experiences. First, we review how bullying is portrayed in child and youth literature. Second, we describe reading strategies to prevent or intervene in bullying situations with literary texts. Finally, we examine research analyzing the effectiveness of reading practices in bullying intervention. We conclude that reading books dealing with bullying and ongoing discussions on this issue are very suitable to alleviating intimidating behaviors in children. If teachers, educators, and parents are proactive and educate children by carrying out activities of education in values, the problem can diminish before it starts or can be under control at primary and secondary education.
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Notes
- 1.
Jauss (1982) also has a scheme for describing identification on five levels of response to the hero. This response may be: (1) associative when the audience assumes a role in the closed, imaginary world of a play action; (2) admiring when the model has a perfection beyond tragic or comic; (3) sympathetic, when the audience projects itself into an alien self and eliminates distance in favor of solidarity with the suffering hero; (4) cathartic, when the audience is freed from the real interests and entanglements of its world and finds liberation through tragic emotion or comic relief; and (5) ironic when the identification is offered to the audience only to be subsequently refused by the destruction of illusion.
- 2.
We should include “impulse readings” (Lluch, 2012: 42) as well as other more validated readings that are approved by critics and literary prizes.
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Yubero, S., Larrañaga, E., Sánchez-García, S., Cañamares, C. (2016). Reading and Texts: Cyberbullying Prevention from Child and Youth Literature. In: Navarro, R., Yubero, S., Larrañaga, E. (eds) Cyberbullying Across the Globe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25552-1_13
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