Abstract:

The conflicts that have erupted around the world in the last decade call for rethinking how to foster peace in educational contexts. In primary school, mediating conflicts daily increasingly requires finding strategies to resolve them and the role of the teacher in this process stands out. Children's literature can be a valuable aid for discovering paths that shed light on the importance of peace in its multiple layers of meaning, contributing to nurture care. Contemporary picturebooks, mainly for the multiple ways they integrate visual and verbal elements, are relevant resources to address peace, encouraging critical thinking.

In the light of the above, the fundamental aim of this paper is to investigate how the implementation and development of reading paths based on Jimmy Liao's picturebook Under the same moon (2023) can contribute to understanding the multifaceted and central nature of peace education, promoting its maintenance. The paper's theoretical and curriculum framework includes international studies and reports on peace education, as well as research into the role of picturebooks in addressing conflict and peace. Methodologically, particular emphasis is placed on the illustrations, focusing on how they can reverberate ways of caring that make it possible to recognize the multidimensionality and relevance of peace. Additionally, the role played by the characters of the narrative to reinforce the need to share kindness is analyzed, bringing about ways of interactions with the illustrations that foreground building peace.

The routes pursued through the analysis undertaken point to ways of increasing education for peace by implementing reading strategies that contribute to increase aesthetic appreciation, using the picturebook, due to the refined and delicate investment in the thought-provoking illustrations. The characters’ actions throughout the narrative shed light on the importance of caring for each other, fostering a manifesto for peace, foregrounded on the calligraphy of affection that the illustrations continuously stimulate, contributing to enhance the relevance of building the common good. The paths undertaken also suggest that providing pre-service teachers tools for rethinking education for peace through the use of picturebooks in the classroom, highlighting and exploring the illustrations, might encourage children's commitment to an active citizenship participation, increasing their desire to care for the planet, in a renewed and innovative way.

Keywords:

Education for peace, primary education, picturebook, illustration.