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Children don’t read any more. Teenagers even less so. Screens have made the comic books and albums of our childhood a thing of the past. Such is the current discourse.

In reality, whether the doomsayers like it or not, children's literature is in good shape. Against all odds, the book continues to hold a special place in the hearts of children. Reading aloud remains a special moment of complicity between adults and children. And that’s good news, given how important early reading is for learning language, overcoming fears, and understanding the world. Even teenagers, with their passion for romance and hero fantasies, will happily immerse themselves in a thick book. 

For several decades, the vitality of children's literature has been sustained by a generation of authors and illustrators who, from Ana Maria Machado (Brazil) and Nahoko Uehashi (Japan) to Maurice Sendak (USA) and Tomi Ungerer (France), have breathed new life into a genre that was, for a long time, trapped inside a didactic or moralistic straitjacket. The result is a proliferating and inventive range of books that speak at child’s level. This is also borne out by the heritage value now accorded to traditional tales, and even to the archives of certain authors and publishers, such as those of Père Castor, which were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2017.

The growth of children’s books can also be measured by their economic good health. In 2023, the sector  was worth almost US$12 billion worldwide, making it a publishing heavyweight in many countries. And this boom is not just due to the success of some global bestsellers. Everywhere, passionate publishers are producing quality books, including in non-mainstream languages. The book What makes us human, co-published by UNESCO, and already available in twenty-one editions, illustrates this approach well.

And yet, despite its economic, symbolic, educational and cultural heft, children’s literature continues to suffer from a lack of recognition. Despite its successes, very little critical space is dedicated to the genre in the traditional media. It’s as if writing for children remains – in the minds of many – a minor activity, an eternal sub-genre.

Michel Tournier (France), the author of Vendredi ou la vie sauvage  [Friday or the Other Island], argued just the opposite back in the 1970s: “It is to pay a very great homage to children, and to agree, as I do, that a work can only be right for a young audience if it is perfect . . . The writer who sets his sights this high therefore conforms to an ambition beyond measure”.

What higher ambition could there be than to help a child grow up? For an adult, what greater delight than to reconnect with their own childhood for the time it takes to read a book?

Agnès Bardon
Editor in Chief