The digital platform www.billiken.lat offers a new way of accessing Billiken’s educational resources. In a project supported by the University of Sheffield’s Arts and Humanities Knowledge Exchange, Lauren Rea and Euhen Matarozzo worked with teachers and other educational specialists to develop a pilot of teaching resources based on Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de la Selva. Following the success of the pilot, they continue to develop new teaching resources based on other publications from Billiken’s extensive back catalogue.
Cuentos de la selva
Horacio Quiroga is considered one of Latin America’s great writers and a master of the short story thanks to collections including Stories of Love, Madness, and Death (1917). He was identified less as a children’s writer despite returning to this genre throughout his career. In Jungle Tales, Quiroga narrates episodes of the lives of animals - and their occasional alliances with humans—from the jungle of Misiones, a province in the North East of Argentina. Jungle Tales is Quiroga’s most famous collection for children and was one of the first works of Latin American children’s literature. Today, it is still read by girls and boys from all over Latin America.
A library of classics for children
In 1929 Editorial Atlántida launched a collection of books adapted for children called La Biblioteca Billiken. Over one hundred titles were published within the collection and in 1999 it was re-launched in paperback format under the name La nueva Biblioteca Billiken [The new Billiken library]. The Biblioteca Billiken bilingual edition of Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de la selva/Jungle Tales forms part of the Billiken Centenary Project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It is the first bilingual edition published in the collection.
The teaching resources based on Cuentos de la selva are aimed at Spanish-speaking primary school children. They include classroom activities, teaching guides and reference material across different curriculum areas such as Language, Maths and Social Sciences. The project also includes resources for learning English based on translations and adaptations of Quiroga's stories and supplemented by our audiobooks.
