Culture and Children's Literature

I'm trying to think about how culture is in children's literature. I am thinking about all the new young adult texts that reference television and technology. YA authors are aware that their readers live in a world outside of books, and they want to reference that world.

BUT...

YA authors are also trying to reshape culture. Now culture is a complex word-- it doesn't have one simple definition-- for starters there is high culture, mass culture, and popular culture. But, what I think YA fiction is attempting to do is to alter popular culture. It is circular though-- there are ways culture is influencing the YA text.

But in regards to literature influencing culture--For kids-- peer pressure has always been an issue spoken about-- one child behaves as another leads him/her to do. So, now, books want to change that. Books like When Zachary Beaver Comes to Town tell you to be nice to the fat kid. Freak The Mighty teaches to be nice to the disabled. Hoot teaches kids to honor the environment. Monster tells you to not give in to peer pressure. Somehow it's not the same didactic lesson that showed up in the nineteenth century. In the books, it's not the adults telling the kids how to live-- it's kids telling other kids how to live. It's almost like there is a high culture among children. Children's high culture is living up to a higher standard than popular children's culture. Children's high culture calls YA readers to care about the environment, to realize that brain is more powerful than brawn. It's a subculture of children who are aware of things their parents weren't aware of in their youth.