[Young children and books]

Children come into contact very early with the written language. The work of Emilia Ferreiro, a student of Piaget, has shown that from early on, well before they can read, they know that the written word has a meaning. Their successive hypotheses show an elaboration which does not occur by chance. Experience shows that babies have a specific interest for a book as an object. They recognize the value of the pictures, as much representations of their mental representations as are words, whereas these two capacities evolve in a complementary fashion. The capacity to be interested by a narrative introduces a new form of organization in the chain of representations, whether they refer to absent or imaginary objects. A good story has a special place among the narratives the child hears, which actually have the specific structures of the written language. The authors of this work report a number of examples of very young children who are put in contact with books. They see in this a new model for mental health work which can be set up by virtue of meetings outside the school rooms, the mental health services, and even of the libraries, by people of different professional skills, in order to loosen the vice of the children's daily routine, and to give the child time to dream with the books, and to draw the adults in to a salutary disorder.