ABSTRACT
Poetry that targets children and youth began to be published in Brazil in book form during the twentieth century. Today, with the publishing market becoming more specialized with respect to the public they wish to reach, particularly the increased production of books for children and youth due to government purchases - which include provision for poetry books - there is a notable strengthening of the trend toward determining the range of readers according to their educational level. In the first decades of the twentieth century, poetry was presented to students in a school that was not yet universal, in verses with uplifting content that were imbued with the goal of teaching and that strongly revealed the voice of adults and their educational convictions. Gradually, literature published for children has been diverging from these uplifting precepts with the emergence of poets who primarily explore the fun side of language in their verses.
