This work aims at establishing a relationship between language and literature in situations of written language acquisition, in the first years of primary education. Conceiving language, and more specifically literature, as a living and historical element fundamental to the formation of the subject, I start questioning the ways and concepts of native language teaching, in view of the existence of a reading being since the initial years of the teaching of reading and writing. Which language concepts guide its teaching in primary school and, according to such concepts, which use is made of literature in this process? For the purpose of confronting these two questions, it was dispensable to select as field of research two schools of the Municipal Teaching System of Rio de Janeiro (a nursery school and a Junior school) from August to December 2002.