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Censorship and Children's Literature

The present arguments over censorship of books for the young reveal, among other things, the conflicts in current social attitudes toward childhood and children. This essay attempts to place such arguments in some historical perspective. It suggests that the relative peace that prevailed in the field of children's literature from, roughly, 1900 to 1965 was the result of a broad consensus within the field about the needs of childhood and the function of literature for children. That consensus was, in turn, the result of the general homogeneity of the people involved in the production and purchase of books for children. Agreement broke up in the mid-1960s, when groups heretofore unconcerned with children's books began to see their social and political implications. Enormous changes in the content of children's literature followed with some paradoxical shifts in liberal-conservative positions on censorship. The 1980s promises to be a period of conflict, as conservative reaction against the liberal trends of the 1970s tries to reverse an accomplished transformation in the literature.