ABSTRACT
The study of children’s literature is usually thematic or generic; it is rewarding, however, to compare authors’ adult texts with those addressed to their child readers. This chapter analyses the transformation of what is written for children in English, by those who are translated or who bring other cultures to their writing in English. Philip Pullman makes an important claim for children’s books: that they address the moral issues so often evaded in recent adult texts. Drawing upon personal experience of revolutionary Paris, Mary Wollstonecraft gave value to the depersonalised poor, recognising the unacknowledged nobility of their endurance. Mark Twain reworked more disparate elements from widely diverse sources, generating important new forms of fiction through parody of Shakespeare, burlesque and use of the vernacular. The substantial and varied achievement of Langston Hughes has received due recognition, although his collaborative work and significant writing for children are insufficiently promoted.
