Writing for the World of Little Giants. A COIL UNAM Proyect

Today, here, in this chronotope I wish to make Felipe Garrido’s words (1997, p. 3) my own to thank each of the forgers of the tale I am about to tell for their generous complicity. And Felipe says: 
Thanks so much. I can now tell you this story… A real life story. Once upon a time there was a dream, a dream in a blue jacket as any other dream. It was inspired by cooperation of human knowledge and experiences along every stage of life: awakenings, developments, and goodbyes of the whole human world. Walking, walking, a stone unveiled the path, its name resounding in doctor Aurora González’s voice that was articulating Gracián’s voices, and said Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). The program was born on a sunny day at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The internet opened its pages, and letters and images became a discovery of new opportunities. Then, the world shrink, rivers reached the seas and, in the beaches, devotees embraced their goodness.

About that time, Pilar Vega Rodríguez was forging her efforts as head of the master’s degree in Creative Writing, under the warm cover of the Faculty of Information Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). Her name, doctor Vega’s, is Pilar because she is a pillar of teaching and disseminating the creative life that embroiders words. She has been committed, for many years, to teaching writing for readers of all ages, but she has a special preference and an extensive expertise in training writers who seek to delight the youngest beings: children. Pilar obtained her degree in Hispanic Philology at the Santiago de Compostela University, her PhD in Hispanic Philology at the National University of Distance Education, and—always interested in book artifacts— a Publishing master’s degree from the UCM. 

I, Margarita—doctor Palacios Sierra—dedicated to Linguistics and Discourse Studies for 55 years at UNAM’s Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, was wandering through the gardens and libraries of the Complutense during a sabbatical semester, when I stumbled upon a message: “Registration for the course-workshop on Literature for children and young readers.” At that moment, all emotions came together. I long wondered about the reasons that forced my students and faculty colleagues to take workshops here and there, without any teaching sequence. They all wrote. They wrote in a corner of their hours and in the intimacy of their solitude, and they all did it with evident creativity. But few institutions offered them the opportunity of a “master’s degree” where to institutionalize their relevant work. At UNAM there is no master’s degree nor specialization where all those who play the game of imagination by drawing and typing words can graduate. I myself had enjoyed the cozy roof of a writing workshop with Felipe Garrido at UNAM’s Teaching Center for Foreigners (CEPE) and had joyfully created a storytelling workshop with students that time would disperse. 

Reading for children gave new meanings to my work’s main objective: discourse study. To narrate, dialogue, create, and serve with and for the world of children. The eyes of a child, their laughter and tears evoke Rabindranath Tagore’s words: “Every child born has a sign on the chest that says: God still believes in Man” (1963, p. 1184). In times like these that scourge and torment us, the phrase is an encouraging smile. 

Maybe with ideas from the nineteenth-century, I made my way to the building where the master’s degree was advertised. I met Pilar. The stories were fascinating. She had also created a project entitled “Discovering Legends” where legendary tales from Spain were collected. She had an updated literary heritage on a dynamic platform which even included a videogame. It was all an important wink for inter-institutional and international collaboration on creative writing. 

That same day, at five o’clock in the afternoon, as Lorca said, the cups of coffee were talking with internationally flavored cookies and inter-institutional perfumes. A napkin was witness to the agreement to sketch up the COIL course between UNAM and UCM; it would be called “Course-Workshop on Children’s Literature: Creative Writing”. Doctor Antonio Garrido, professor emeritus of the UCM, ever in love with these paths, was witness and actor of the meeting. Distance shortened through a WhatsApp message, and Dolores González-Casanova, director of Institutional Liaison at UNAM’s Office for International Cooperation (DGECI), from where she coordinates the University Network of Internationalization Officers (RURI), embraced the phone and the idea. Thus we sowed the first seed of an online international collaboration project. Carlos Maza Pesqueira, coordinator of Internationalization Programs at DGECI and editor for UNAM International, arrived to set the stage and open the curtain. We all applauded and the show began on January 25 and all tickets were sold out by June of this year 2024. 

The classroom? A cyber-space where the voices of six Spanish and thirteen Mexican students zoombed [the author plays a word game with the name of the Zoom platform and the Spanish word for “buzz”, zumbar], surpassing the expected number—15—for the first edition. They all defied time zones and sat at desks set in distant lands. The experience? To learn techniques, and to write, to keep writing for the children’s world. The joy? To meet the others, those in the opposite side of the sea, to discover their words, their speeches, their traditions, their passions, and their cultural worlds. 

The scene was set at the José Luis Ibáñez annex of UNAM’s Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, which opened its doors to us. There, nervous, the screen, the computer, the speakers (closer, no, like this… That’s it!), the constant alarm about the YES/NO efficiency of technological communication awaited us. Hugo Martínez, our academic support, ordered things, registered e-mails, and dispensed cordiality. The willing student-actors and actresses coincided every Thursday at the scheduled time—nine in the morning here, five in the afternoon there—. Greetings were exchanged and presentations were filled with stories about the definitions of children’s and young readers’ literature, its functions of magical transformation, imagination, language development, literary forms, and reading and creative competencies. 

With our open book we learned that the drawing of a bunny is showing out its ears on the left panel of the page, and its body is stretching to the right to place, in the following page, its tail. Why? Because the child is learning to read and the hand of writing and the eyes of reading walk from left to right. We learned that letters and pictures imply and complement each other. We learned to measure writing according to the ages of our readers and their psychological development. 

Week by week, the horizon of writing foundations expanded. The child, our receiver, became the main character in our scenarios, that were playing according to the norms of genres and narrative formats. In order to occupy this forum, it was necessary to go through the panorama of children’s literature, the classics, the moderns, and the contemporary. An avalanche of stories and writers of children’s literature, awarded around the world, accumulated in our computers and in the hispanomex classroom, as “that Spaniard” of fond memory would say. With enthusiasm we read fantastically true and successful stories. And we also knew that the necessary reality of editing and selling these stories was the purpose of the work and the way to meet our reader. The editorial market jumped onto the scene. Surprising all, professional resources, sources of information, dissemination magazines, contests, fairs, and spaces that invited us to enjoy the tales were revealed. 

As the exercised progressed, writing tips, suggestions for work organization, text development, plot construction, character creation, style typification, wise reiterations, rhythmic onomatopoeias, and resonant words came in. 

Now, let’s dive into writing! We began to explore poetry, fairy tales, animal fables, fantastic stories, science fiction, adventure stories, and realistic narrations, and to try re-writings, re-significations, and the resurrection of some childhood life tucked away and asleep in the sleep of our time. 

Thanks to this COIL course of international knowledge and concord, we learned. We learned to take hold of the “broad and alien” world that Ciro Alegría talked about. We learned to reflect with Wittgenstein on “How do words refer to sensations?” Those words which, as he explains: 
So, texts were covered with onomatopoeias and the rhythmic and sonorous materiality constructed sense and meaning. The playful words were linked with the children’s lives to awake imagination and ethical and human feelings. We read the story of Oscar and The Lady in Pink by Eric Emmanuel Schmitt, where, from the story’s universe, the child narrator re-signifies life, death, and illness. The ludic and aesthetic functions of literature emerged in that cyber-classroom: there were verses born from folklore, lullabies, and short riddles so as not to bore the new reader, choruses to dance and repeat. Reading and writing were the recreation of a child’s world, close for them, far from the adult. I confess and I believe that, perhaps for that reason, adults like to tell stories at the edge of the bed of an attentive and sleepy child. Here we confirm that these tales are for adults and children and that they link the lives of parents and their kids. Thus, we listen to our memories: “Tell me the one about the chicks,” she would say; “But I’ve told you that story many times…”; “It doesn’t matter, do it again.” The reiteration of two lives intertwined in “chicks”. 

Stories teach things, awaken ideas, and stage the diverse complexity of life. Cyberspace and its characters went on vacation and received a certificate for their participation and a bag of experiences and texts to continue writing. 

The course concluded, without ending, ellipsis, suspense… To review, to rewrite, and to live again saying, as Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “You crowd of little beings, leave the print of your feet in my words” (1963, p. 157). Tales of ideals, of real ideals that were born on the leaves of these desks, are preparing for publication. And all this happens because, echoing Isabel Vallejo’s words: “We narrate, we write, and we read because we have fabricated the fabulous tool of human language. Through words, we can share inner worlds and chimeric ideas” (2022, p. 20). And I add that, like Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, they are real. 

The story is not over yet and I wish long life to this project. There is no “and they lived happily ever after” here, since there are plenty of blue possibilities to recreate an better life. We all know that meeting the “other” is to begin to understand them, and understanding does not imply agreement, but it does open a space for deliberation. The object/subject of those of us who study and analyze discourse is the interaction of actors in diverse locations with discourses that signify and re-signify the space where we live. With these discourses we inhabit the world. From diverse optics and perspectives, these COIL, these international collaborative online courses open doors and windows so that we can affirm and teach that others also do exist. I invite you to create and live the experience of a COIL course. 

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