ABSTRACT
Because the contexts in which children's literature is produced and disseminated are usually dominated by a focus on content and theme, the language of children's literature receives little explicit attention. Yet style—which is the way things are represented, based on complex codes and conventions of language and presuppositions about language—is an important component of texts, and the study of it allows us access to some of the key processes which shape text production (Scholes 1985:2–3). The assumption that what is said can be extricated from how it is said, and that language is therefore only a transparent medium, is apt to result in readings with at best a limited grasp of written genres or of the social processes and movements with which genres and styles interrelate.
