"Lessons to flight" to start living again. Visual narrative in a state time of emergency. The ridescovery of educational potential

Abstract

In the months of lockdown, in that suspended time, we recovered the «lessons of the Open» that books have to offer (Recalcati, 2018). Narratives, art expressions which «fit on the shelf» (Lee, 2012, p.170), allowed children to live an enveloping experience (Petit, 2002/2010), to discover fragments of beauty, thus contrasting boredom and educational poverty in its diverse forms. This essay will look into how beauty was unexpectedly found in the visual narrative, nurturing hope to overcome fears, to seize the emergency as an occasion to free oneself of what is excess, to be strong in bravely accepting adversities and to cultivate the ability to look at reality from original perspectives, as the picture book Flight lessons teaches us. Here, through the use of metaphor, the young readers are taught that living is a little like flying and that it is “not necessary to reach the stars to touch the sky” (Vainio, 2008/2021).