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Promoting reading in the initial educational levels plays a central role in order to ensure the academic success of students in future stages. This article analyzes the Dialogic Literary Gatherings (TLD), a Successful Educational Action based on the reading and discussion of classic works of universal literature, which is being implemented in several schools in Spain and different Latin American countries. Through the history of Khadija (10 years old), a Moroccan student attending a primary school in Spain, the article discusses how Dialogic Literary Gatherings, besides contributing to accelerate instrumental learning through the reading of the best works of literature, fosters among students values and feelings, such as friendship and solidarity, fundamental in the emotional and academic development of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of school textbooks for literature teaching in Argentine high schools during the years of democratic transition and manuals edited after the education reform imposed by the Federal Education Act (1993) shows fundamental transformations. Not only do these changes relate to the works and authors chosen for classroom reading but also to the theoretical, didactic and cultural criteria through which that literary school canon was built in the 80's as well as nowadays. In fact, changes made in the selection of authors, works and genres reveal much deeper changes: those related to various underlying conceptions in the design of a corpus for teaching literature in high school. This essay proposes a possible interpretation of changes in the criteria that defined the construction of a literary canon for Argentine high school. Special consideration was given to transformation experienced in three aspects: representations of power at school, literary taste and contents considered culturally legitimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]