Improbable dialogues: A mediating approach to children’s literature, media, and theory

This article examines Diálogos Improbables [Improbable Dialogues], a reading club focused on children’s literature, media and theory in Latin America. Hosted online in a free and open-access space, the club invited young scholars, teachers, reading mediators, and other practitioners to draw improbable connections between texts from different typologies, disciplines and epistemes. Its aim was to bridge academic and non-academic spheres through a participatory, affective and dialogic approach. This work explores how Diálogos Improbables fostered collective meaning-making through its three core principles: improbability, which embraces productive dissonance; horizontality, which redistributes authority through egalitarian conversations; and accessibility, which ensures multilingual, inclusive, and adaptable participation. It further reflects on how the interplay between these principles enabled a form of critical enjoyment, understood here as a mode of engagement in which both participants and mediators could navigate tensions between aesthetic pleasure and analytical thinking.Grounded in this initiative, the discussion draws on Latin American traditions of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970), postcolonial frameworks (Visvanathan, 2009), transactional theory of reading (Rosenblatt, 1938/1995), and the concept of weird readings as an affective disruption to normative expectations (Véliz, 2023). This combined framework uncovers how the club’s approach rethinks dominant epistemologies and foregrounds reflexivity and praxis. A closer look at this experience exposes both the potential and challenges inherent in nurturing a collaborative space for knowledge exchange. Ultimately, the reflections drawn from Diálogos Improbables offer insights on more affective and critical engagements with children's media, both within and beyond academic contexts.