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Bachicha, Natalie

English

2014

M.A.

Though children's literature has been long overlooked in critical circles, contemporary scholarship has turned its attention to the medium's ideological imperatives. While the genre in its very inception has been rooted in social, cultural, and religious discourses, its historical impact has had as much to do with the ways in which the genre has subverted mainstream values as it has reified it. This has been especially true of children's literature in the 20th century. Owing much to the belief that children's literature is exceptional in its ability to influence the most impressionable, the medium became a special focus of writers on the right and left of the political aisle, a phenomenon which came to a head midcentury. In the 1950s in particular, during the thick of the Cold War, articles of culture took on special meaning, and as producers thereof often fell under scrutiny, access to production grew increasingly precious among members of the Left. Navigating the narrow channels between leftist political imperatives and rightwing scrutiny, children's author Ruth Krauss provides an exceptional study of the ways in which contemporary writers utilized the incredibly nuanced relationship between illustration and text to promote notions of antiauthoritarianism, alternative expressions of gender, and racial equality while simultaneously evading popular censorship.