In the forest of the children's book "The Wolf in Underpants," by Wilfrid Lupano and Mayana Itoïz (Via Lúdica), life revolves around one certainty: at the top of the hill lives a ferocious wolf, with sharp teeth, ready to attack at any moment. There are newspapers that feed the fear, posters scattered across the trees, books about how to deal with the wolf, coaches offering courses and even an anti-wolf brigade. The related commerce thrives, conversations repeat the same narrative, and the daily routines of the inhabitants become organized around a threat that, in truth, no one seems to have seen up close.
More than a very entertaining story, it is also a remarkably timely metaphor for the informational environment in which we live. When the wolf finally appears, calm and not at all threatening, there is a reversal of expectations: instead of the danger so many times described, there is a somewhat ridiculous fellow in his underpants. In shock, the residents realize that the community had organized its worldview based on biased information produced, selected and repeated by various media outlets.
The forest portrayed in the book thus reminds us that we live within informational ecosystems that shape behaviors, emotions and everyday decisions, and in which we are not merely consumers of information, but active participants.
It is common to associate media literacy with the use of cell phones, social media or disinformation — things still far removed from children's world. But educating for the media means, first and foremost, learning to ask questions about any narrative: who told this story? How was it constructed? What was left out? What emotions does it stir? Is it reliable? Who benefits when we believe it? Anchored in literature, this exercise can begin long before a child starts accessing the internet, developing vocabulary, attitudes and values so that, later on, they can work out their role and responsibilities in the digital environment.
Literature offers especially fertile ground for this, because it creates a safe distance between the reader and the problem. By discussing the forest animals' fear, we can talk about rumors, stereotypes, economic interests, representation and the construction of information in a playful and tangible way, adapting the concepts to the age group and without having to draw on real, polarized subjects. Through the mediation of attentive reading and reflective questions, children learn that media is not a neutral landscape: stories are constructed by someone, different characters perceive the same event in distinct ways, and every narrative involves choices and produces impacts.
Many children's books offer entry points into competencies that we now recognize as central to media literacy. In "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs!" by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, the narrative told from the wolf's perspective invites children to reflect on point of view, framing, and the impact of hearing only one version of the facts. "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type," by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin, opens space to discuss communicative intent and persuasion, by showing how different communication strategies can be used to convince an interlocutor. Meanwhile, reading "Who Said?," by Caroline Arcari and Guilherme Lira, can lead to an exploration of gender stereotypes in advertisements, toy packaging, or television programs that children are familiar with, revealing how narratives frequently reproduce social models that we end up internalizing.
Literature has always been the first doorway to learning how to read the world. Today we know that this includes understanding how stories, images, and information circulate, who produces them, and how they influence our choices. Nurturing readers remains one of the most powerful ways of nurturing citizens capable of participating, with autonomy and responsibility, in life within a society profoundly mediated by communication.
