Many authors of books on literature ignore the stories considering that they constitute a minor genre and that they are hardly worth considering, however I think that it does not have to be this way, as I will demonstrate in my essay and also that it constitutes a wonderful tool for initiate childhood in a magical, infinite and enriching world, that of books.
Let's start dismantling the myth that the story is a minor genre in importance. It is not difficult to do so, it is enough to refer to the feathers of Julio Cortázar, Benedetti, Borges or Eduardo Galeano among many others, to defend that the story can have a high category and be much more than a mere story for children.
But even in children's stories, to despise the ink of Andersen, Grimm or Perrault is an immeasurable pride worthy of arrogant critics too locked up in their own universe of letters and dusty writings. As you can see in the annexes that I attach, there are not a few authoritative voices that defend the literary quality of the great authors of short stories.
The germ of stories is in the oral tradition and this is why they have been despised in many cases when they became a literary genre. At first they limited themselves to collecting these traditional narratives, but the story has evolved and is no longer limited to being a simple compilation of legends constituting its own genre, with its subgenres and peculiarities.
And once we have made its literary importance clear, let's talk about its influence on young minds as an inducer to reading.
Most children have their first contact with books through the colorful copies that their parents hold for them to observe the drawings while they narrate what is written there. When they begin to read, the stories are the first writings on which their eyes rest trying to decipher the magical secrets that they contain. They meet all the requirements: they are short, simple in language and the themes catch your imagination brimming with mysteries, fairies, princesses and magical dwarfs.
With time and age, a child who has been instilled with the pleasure of falling asleep with a story, will begin to want to know for himself what happens to his favorite characters and little by little he will delve into the intimate pleasure of immersing himself in the pages of a book and begin to live their stories with no more voice than that interior that caresses your soul when you stand before the spell of words.
A story can create readers not only among children. Story books or short stories for adults catch people who have left childhood behind and who, immersed in a life of haste and stress, do not find time to read a longer novel.
The stories allow us to take advantage of a wait in the doctor's office, a trip on public transport or a brief moment before falling asleep to fan their sheets and let their letters take us away from the daily routine and its whirlwind of noise and rush and transport us to different places giving a break to our mind, too subject to constant anxiety.
I think I have shown that the story is not only not a minor genre, but that it can measure up to the greatest works and that its importance is basic and essential for the promotion of reading in children and adults, helping it to heal custom of perv reading in the new generations.
Let us therefore be irreducible storytellers with our children, let us discover the pleasure of not putting barriers to dreams and of loving reading, through our voices at first and autonomously and with their personal choices later.
