ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the production of children’s literature in New Zealand. It problematizes
the current practices of releasing and distributing children’s literature, and explores these prac-
tices as technologies of control through processes of censorship and classification set by govern-
ment agencies such as the Office for Film and Literature. Decisions about what is and what is
not acceptable for children’s development, it is argued, are not neutral and are instead driven
by a neoliberal image of the ‘happy’ uncomplicated child. The article takes the example of the
state-funded and distributed My Feelings series as a widely accessible text that is embedded in
neoliberal ideology. As this series is distributed to all New Zealand early childhood centres and
kindergartens, this article explores understandings of how politics of government influence chil-
dren’s literature. The work of Va´clav Havel and Michel Foucault are drawn upon to demon-
strate the mechanisms of ideologically driven forms of governmental power that directly impact
on the constitution of certain types of childhoods. An example from a contrasting historical
and political discourse in the form of communist Czechoslovakia suggests unexpected synergies
between neoliberal and socialist ideological frameworks. This analysis further problematizes
notions of power in the distribution of children’s literature, and illustrates the influence that
political agendas have on the production of idealized political childhood subjectivities.
