Children's literature is often dismissed as literature written by those who can't write any better for those who can't read any better. The following study is intended to disprove both of these assumptions by looking at the quality and diversity of writing for young people over the past 100 years. As well as showing that a great deal of children's literature is good literature which can withstand any kind of critical scrutiny, I have attempted to show that whatever its literary merit, children's literature is an important phenomenon for several reasons. First, reading is inextricably bound up with language and language acquisition, and it is through language that we understand and construct the world. While reading, the young person is trying out new languages, experimenting with different kinds of subject positions and identities, and encountering different ideas about what the world feels like.

Another reason why children's literature is important is that in our society reading is an activity which is valued by the majority of the population, and certainly by major institutions. The most obvious forum in which reading comes to the fore is school, and it is not accidental that by far and away the majority of books for young readers are highly instructive. This means that what is being read is deeply implicated in the kinds of values and ideas the child learns to hold about society. No literature is neutral, but children's literature is more concerned with shaping its readers’ attitudes than most. Therefore, if we are interested in understanding how our society works – where young people get their attitudes about issues such as sex, gender, violence, government, and war – it behoves us to look at what is being read.

The dialectical interaction between social policy and children's literature is a fascinating and fruitful area of study, which I have only briefly touched on here, as the nature of this exercise has been to provide an overview of the issues and narrative techniques of children's literature. Indeed, in a study of this kind it is impossible to provide a panoramic view of children's literature. Accordingly, I have had to be selective, trying to focus on what is either representative, influential, or ground-breaking.