Words at Play for Emerging Readers: Children's Poetry in the Framework of Italian Preschool Education (Age Zero to Six)

This article focuses on the evolution of Italian children’s poetry—from the new direction taken by Gianni Rodari and Alfonso Gatto in the 1950s to the playful experiments of the 1970s and 1980s and the more recent collections that helped stimulate children’s early interest in experimenting with language. In the recent works of Bruno Tognolini and Chiara Carminati, language play is accompanied by the discovery of everyday life, offering a creative and surprising reading of the day-to-day aspects of very young readers’ experiences. National policy papers, followed by the establishment of the integrated education system for children from birth to six years (Italian Legislative Decree 65/2017), have recently defined a coherent pedagogical framework for childhood education, enhancing children’s rights and their cognitive, relational, and expressive abilities. These new policies, which aim to guide the work of preschool teachers, underline the importance of developing the ability to listen and communicate through many languages and the personal and active exploration of the world. Starting from this perspective, contemporary children’s poetry effectively enhances childhood culture, fostering the construction of a linguistic education path that enables all children, without social or cultural distinction, to appropriate the symbolic and cultural materials of their community in a personal way.