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Children’s 68: introduction

2018; Association Française de Recherche sur les Livres et les Objets Culturels de l’Enfance (AFRELOCE); Issue: 13 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4000/strenae.1998

2109-9081

Sophie Heywood,

European history and politics

In the years around '68, children's books and media became caught up in the current of turbulence, protest and countercultural agitation that characterised this era.A new motif emerged -the children's version of the raised fist of the revolutionary.It appeared in imprint logos, sometimes holding a lollipop aloft, often with a child's face imposed on it, or on badges for children handed out with magazines, or even, in the case of a German picturebook Fünf Finger sind eine Faust (Five fingers make a fist, 1969) forming the subject of an entire story.Some books looked revolutionary.The bold red circle on a vivid green background on the cover of Iela Mari's Il palloncino rosso (Little red balloon, 1967) called to mind third world liberation flags.Other picturebooks came packaged in revolutionary colours such as black and red, or packed a visual punch inspired by the famous Polish school of poster design, or the Push Pin Studio style.There were also manifestos for revolt.This was a favourite theme in Scandinavian children's publishing, which produced the incendiary Den lille røde bog for skoleelever (The little red schoolbook, 1969), which taught children that "all adults are paper tigers", and Frances Vestin's Handbok i barnindoktrinering (Manual of child indoctrination, 1969) which advocated systematically, and from a very young age, teaching children to disobey.The Danish produced politicised television programmes for pre-schoolers, such as Cirkeline og flugten fra Amerika (Cirkeline and the escape from America, 1970) featuring scenes of police brutality against the Black Panthers.Even Britain, which had been relatively unaffected by the events of '68, witnessed the publication of the "Children's Bust Book" edition of Children's rights magazine in 1972, which advised children on how to resist arrest, while the two landmark obscenity trials of the early 1970s centred on countercultural publications ostensibly aimed at schoolchildren (including the aforementioned Little red schoolbook).Something was happening to children's culture across Europe, and beyond.But what is the connection between all these examples, and how significant was this moment?