The representation of Black in Brazilian children's literature

This article presents a qualitative research that focused on the representation of the black characters in Brazilian children 's literary production from the beginning of the 20th century until the first years of the 21st century. Our goal was searching for books that value the Afro-Brazilian identity for a pedagogical work with Africanities and social relations in the initial grades of elementary school. We noticed that literature, as a reflection of society, has excluded or treated Afrodescendants differently over many years in the history of Brazil. Considering the assumptions of authors such as Sousa (2001), Gouvea (2005), Hunt (2010) and Silva e Silva (2011) to guide our study, we present some results that demonstrate how the black representation in children's literature went through phases as omission; stereotyping; and misrepresentation of image, character and intelligence. In addition to that, we have also analyzed some opinions about censorship in school literary collections and named examples of texts that can be explored in a pedagogical work concerned with ethnic relations in the school environment.