Pequenos detetives: considerações sobre a ficção policial brasileira para crianças e jovens

Abstract

Detective fiction and children's and youth fiction have always been considered minor genres by hegemonic critics in Brazil. This is not, however, the only affinity between them. In the history of detective fiction, both in the classical period and in its modern phase, the reader's identification with the figure of the detective is recurrent, which contributed to the popularization of the genre. In children's and youth detective fiction, this also occurs, with the difference that, in this case, the detective's place is occupied not by a single character but by a group of children. The objective of this article is to understand what strategies are used by our authors of children's and youth detective fiction to seek such identification and, furthermore, to try to show that the genre, by working not only with logical reasoning but, above all, with imagination, contributes for the formation of readers and citizens. As theoretical and critical support, the article includes works by José Paulo Paes, Maria Helena Werneck, Todorov, Sandra Reimão, Vincent Jouve. As a fictional corpus, we will address contemporary Brazilian works of children's and youth detective fiction that dialogue with the tradition of the genre, in its version for adults.