outline for the conditions of children literature from 1970 through present

1960’s involved the institutional market

1970's

-There has been an overproduction of some kinds of books-notably picture books and a general underfunding of education.

-the number of titles of children’s books rose steadily during this period. Each title had a shorter print run than earlier in the decade, because publishers were ‘driven inexorably towards shorter print runs, fast selling lines, or both’, with the danger that the quality of writing for children would suffer.

-short print runs affected the structure of royalties to children’s authors who traditionally relied on their books being retained in publishers’ lists over several years.

-presentation mattered more than content; that the boom in pop-up books of the time . ‘Apart form the subliminal message to children that things shaped as books can be fun, they have nothing to do with the magic of the word’ (Children’s Books of the Year, 1979)

-the rise in the cost of block-making, printing, and paper meant that there were fewer illustrations in children’s novels and the general inflationary pressure throughout the 1970s resulted in a very step rise in the general cost of hardbound books. Consequently, there was a surge in paperback publishing of children’s literature

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1980’s

-1970’s economic trends and anxieties continued into the 1980s. Cuts in money for public libraries, the price of children’s books rose inexorably.

-The sharing of books across the years and the common core of a shared reading experience will be lost(Children’s Books of the Year)

1990’s through present

with the development of interactive multimedia, the interactive books of the future would be electronic using many technology.

-condition of late twentieth and early twenty-first-century children’s literature: the overwhelming reading list, everything seems already to have been said and done. Kids find themselves trapped in moments of high culture.

-Contemporary children live in communities of false belief and mistrust; religious doubt, indifference, skepticism, impatience, or passive acceptance of other people’s failures. Shocking subjects that give hint to their curiosity is more appealing to contemporary children. Also bullshitting language is overused in the literature in this period.

-Much recent children’s literature locates its boys and girls on city streets, in urban surroundings

-There are many experimental children books published like touch and feel books, pop-up books, parody books of traditional story, and others with mixed medium.

-Moreover, there is style figurations of that old meaning of the word, the writing instrument. Adapted different medium to stylize the written story.(Ex:Fantastic Mr. Fox, Alice in wonderland, Challie and the chocolate factory, Stuart Little, Harry Potter, Where the wild things are)