Contemporary Polish literature for children and young adults (including literary texts in school education) has been a subject of public debates on the so — called zone of silence around multiculturalism for years. Both contemporary literary texts for a young readership and cultural education at school rarely address either issues related to the understanding of other (national, ethnic, and religious minority) cultures or the recognition of stereotypical thinking about the Other. This chapter argues that school curricula in Poland promote Polish identity, which is strongly connected with Poland’s purported cultural and religious homogeneity. However, the set of texts to be read at school is gradually changing, and educational publications on migration and inclusive education are also beginning to appear.

This chapter showcases the changing position of children’s literature in the Ukrainian school canon in the last decade. The reforms of literary education began in Ukraine in 2015–2016. In 2018, the new State Standard of General Elementary Education came into effect, followed by the new State Standard of Basic Secondary Education two years later. This chapter identifies key factors in the dynamics and transformations of the Ukrainian school canon used from 2000 to 2016 and from 2016 to 2022 in elementary schools, demonstrating the most significant changes and reorientations based on comparative and typological research of the school canon’s content before and after the introduction of the new curricula in 2016.

This chapter examines Ukrainian literary classics as part of the school canon from the publishing and media perspectives. Situating the discussion within contemporary canon theory and debates on decolonization, it considers how children’s classics are shaped by institutional, educational, and sociocultural forces. The chapter analyzes selected reeditions and transmedia adaptations of works by canonical Ukrainian authors, focusing on narrative, visual, and design strategies which are used to ‘refresh’ and modernize their writings for contemporary young audiences. Particular attention is paid to the tensions between preservation and transformation, as well as to the risks of simplification or massification inherent in adaptation processes. The study concludes by emphasizing the need to assess communicative effectiveness through empirical reader-response and reception-oriented research.

This chapter offers an overview of the international children’s classics included in elementary and middle-school curricula in Croatia in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The study is based on the available official lists of books recommended for individual reading issued by the educational authorities and on translation trends throughout the twentieth century as established in previous research. The analysis is divided into three periods marked by the different geopolitical and ideological status of Croatia: (1) after WWI; (2) after WWII until the proclamation of independence in 1991; and (3) after 1991. New canons of national children’s classics were established at the beginning of the second and third periods, but they had hardly any influence on the choice of favored international classics.

In this chapter, we examine the shifts that translated children’s literature effected in the Polish school canon between the end of World War II and the early years of the new millennium. We outline the presence of foreign children’s literature on the mandatory reading lists for elementary school, taking into account the languages of the originals, their genres and time of composition, and the factors behind the inclusion/exclusion of texts in/from the school canon. Against this background, we discuss the attempt to redefine the Polish children’s and young adult literature canon that was launched in 2007 by means of the “All of Poland Reads to Kids” series. Mostly containing translations, the twenty-three volumes of the series have enjoyed great popularity in Poland, inviting reflection on how the collection has proven complementary to the official school canon.

This chapter examines the functions and meanings of the literary canon in modern times, beginning with Harold Bloom and moving to Terry Eagleton’s and John Guillory’s approaches. Against this theoretical background, the contemporary Polish school canon is analyzed in relation to the reading habits and literary preferences of teenagers in Poland. The author argues for incorporating popular and young adult literature into the curriculum and aligning students’ expectations with the values represented in the canon. Findings from a national survey of 15-year-old students provide empirical evidence of their reading expectations, literary tastes, and interpretive practices. While the curriculum should preserve national values, it must also respond to contemporary realities and engage students’ attention.

Contrary to the Soviet government’s intention to create a gender-neutral children’s literature in Stalin’s USSR, children’s poetry and short stories of the time reveal a widespread culture of ‘gender hostility’ and prejudice. Rather than redefining and reformulating traditional gender roles, children’s literature supported the state’s demand for strong men and favored boys while sidelining girls. Poems and stories by popular children’s authors such as Agniia Barto, Valentin Kataev, Arkadii Gaidar, and Sergei Mikhalkov reflect the gender norms and behaviors that were instilled in young readers and show how these norms inevitably hindered an inclusive gender-role socialization through literature.

This chapter reexamines traditional approaches to canon formation, which focus on authors, critics, and individual works, and instead offers an approach centered on themes, protagonist agency, and narration, using post-1991 Russian adolescent fiction as a case study. We describe teen literature written since the fall of the Soviet Union, focusing on texts that characterize what we call the third wave (2018–2022). Third-wave works are told in the protagonist’s voice and feature normalization as protagonists are ordinary young teens who solve their own everyday problems. The role of the reader is emphasized; readers’ responses to the works they read influence the direction literature takes and shape the canon as it forms and develops.

This chapter analyzes contemporary Polish herstorical literature for children and young adults that has not been included in the school canon. It identifies three key areas of herstory — exceptional women, feminist movements, and experiences of sexuality, the body, and motherhood — and examines how they are addressed in selected texts. The study contrasts the framing of gender in such literature with the gender imbalance evident in Polish curricula and textbooks, which reveals the systemic underrepresentation and stereotyping of female characters. It highlights the potential of fictional biographies for reclaiming marginalized voices and cultivating intergenerational memory. The article highlights the role of literature in constructing alternative historical narratives (herstory) that promote gender sensitivity, inclusivity, and critical engagement with the past.

Stanislav Rostotsky’s Dozhivem do ponedel’nika (We’ll Live Till Monday, 1968), which established the “school film” canon, and Aleksei Veledinsky’s Geograf globus propil (The Geographer Drank His Globe Away, 2013), which developed this canon half a century later, are preoccupied with searching for happiness as part of a purposeful life, itself the goal of education. This chapter argues that the two films foreground this search as the pursuit of meaningful time and place through history and geography, the academic disciplines that define humanity in temporal and spatial terms. Making the teacher-image central to the school’s spacetime, the films define happiness chronotopically. The chapter demonstrates the intersection of place and opportune time in the search for happiness and hence argues for serious geographical instruction as a prerequisite for the study of history.

The chapter studies the canonization of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) in the context of Polish culture and argues that the canon issue is threefold in this respect. Firstly, there is Snow White as a canonical fairy tale that is reproduced as a strong cultural image. Secondly, this fairy tale has become part of children’s literature as a contextualized and often censored story that appears in various versions on the markets worldwide. Finally, there is a film fairy tale that belongs to the Disney canon, which entangles Snow White in the expanding American film industry discourse. Since Disney has used (and continues to use) similar centralized marketing strategies in many countries, that canonization of children’s literature is likely to have followed a similar pattern internationally. However, as specific historical and cultural circumstances have impacted the process, the differences in each version may indicate key national characteristics in the canon. These developments can and should be studied for each Disney text and each country in which it was distributed. The chapter focuses on the Polish context, noting that similar canonization processes have probably occurred in many other countries.

Saga o Wiedźminie (The Witcher Saga, 1994–1999, Eng. 2008–2017) by Andrzej Sapkowski is arguably the most popular Polish fantasy novel series and possibly Poland’s globally most recognizable work of fiction, translated into thirty-seven languages worldwide. The Saga chronicles the journey of Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster hunter, as he navigates a meticulously crafted high-fantasy world of moral ambiguity. Owing to its place in the collective imagination, Sapkowski’s work may be situated within multiple canons. This chapter examines how The Witcher Saga can function within the Polish literary canon in school and beyond, how it offers a contemporary perspective on the canon, and how its reception exposes problems with curricula dominated by linguistically archaic and culturally distant nineteenth- and early twentieth-century classics.

Contemporary Polish literature for children and young adults (including literary texts in school education) has been a subject of public debates on the so — called zone of silence around multiculturalism for years. Both contemporary literary texts for a young readership and cultural education at school rarely address either issues related to the understanding of other (national, ethnic, and religious minority) cultures or the recognition of stereotypical thinking about the Other. This chapter argues that school curricula in Poland promote Polish identity, which is strongly connected with Poland’s purported cultural and religious homogeneity. However, the set of texts to be read at school is gradually changing, and educational publications on migration and inclusive education are also beginning to appear.

This chapter showcases the changing position of children’s literature in the Ukrainian school canon in the last decade. The reforms of literary education began in Ukraine in 2015–2016. In 2018, the new State Standard of General Elementary Education came into effect, followed by the new State Standard of Basic Secondary Education two years later. This chapter identifies key factors in the dynamics and transformations of the Ukrainian school canon used from 2000 to 2016 and from 2016 to 2022 in elementary schools, demonstrating the most significant changes and reorientations based on comparative and typological research of the school canon’s content before and after the introduction of the new curricula in 2016.

This chapter examines Ukrainian literary classics as part of the school canon from the publishing and media perspectives. Situating the discussion within contemporary canon theory and debates on decolonization, it considers how children’s classics are shaped by institutional, educational, and sociocultural forces. The chapter analyzes selected reeditions and transmedia adaptations of works by canonical Ukrainian authors, focusing on narrative, visual, and design strategies which are used to ‘refresh’ and modernize their writings for contemporary young audiences. Particular attention is paid to the tensions between preservation and transformation, as well as to the risks of simplification or massification inherent in adaptation processes. The study concludes by emphasizing the need to assess communicative effectiveness through empirical reader-response and reception-oriented research.

This chapter offers an overview of the international children’s classics included in elementary and middle-school curricula in Croatia in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The study is based on the available official lists of books recommended for individual reading issued by the educational authorities and on translation trends throughout the twentieth century as established in previous research. The analysis is divided into three periods marked by the different geopolitical and ideological status of Croatia: (1) after WWI; (2) after WWII until the proclamation of independence in 1991; and (3) after 1991. New canons of national children’s classics were established at the beginning of the second and third periods, but they had hardly any influence on the choice of favored international classics.

In this chapter, we examine the shifts that translated children’s literature effected in the Polish school canon between the end of World War II and the early years of the new millennium. We outline the presence of foreign children’s literature on the mandatory reading lists for elementary school, taking into account the languages of the originals, their genres and time of composition, and the factors behind the inclusion/exclusion of texts in/from the school canon. Against this background, we discuss the attempt to redefine the Polish children’s and young adult literature canon that was launched in 2007 by means of the “All of Poland Reads to Kids” series. Mostly containing translations, the twenty-three volumes of the series have enjoyed great popularity in Poland, inviting reflection on how the collection has proven complementary to the official school canon.

This chapter examines the functions and meanings of the literary canon in modern times, beginning with Harold Bloom and moving to Terry Eagleton’s and John Guillory’s approaches. Against this theoretical background, the contemporary Polish school canon is analyzed in relation to the reading habits and literary preferences of teenagers in Poland. The author argues for incorporating popular and young adult literature into the curriculum and aligning students’ expectations with the values represented in the canon. Findings from a national survey of 15-year-old students provide empirical evidence of their reading expectations, literary tastes, and interpretive practices. While the curriculum should preserve national values, it must also respond to contemporary realities and engage students’ attention.

Contrary to the Soviet government’s intention to create a gender-neutral children’s literature in Stalin’s USSR, children’s poetry and short stories of the time reveal a widespread culture of ‘gender hostility’ and prejudice. Rather than redefining and reformulating traditional gender roles, children’s literature supported the state’s demand for strong men and favored boys while sidelining girls. Poems and stories by popular children’s authors such as Agniia Barto, Valentin Kataev, Arkadii Gaidar, and Sergei Mikhalkov reflect the gender norms and behaviors that were instilled in young readers and show how these norms inevitably hindered an inclusive gender-role socialization through literature.

This chapter reexamines traditional approaches to canon formation, which focus on authors, critics, and individual works, and instead offers an approach centered on themes, protagonist agency, and narration, using post-1991 Russian adolescent fiction as a case study. We describe teen literature written since the fall of the Soviet Union, focusing on texts that characterize what we call the third wave (2018–2022). Third-wave works are told in the protagonist’s voice and feature normalization as protagonists are ordinary young teens who solve their own everyday problems. The role of the reader is emphasized; readers’ responses to the works they read influence the direction literature takes and shape the canon as it forms and develops.

This chapter analyzes contemporary Polish herstorical literature for children and young adults that has not been included in the school canon. It identifies three key areas of herstory — exceptional women, feminist movements, and experiences of sexuality, the body, and motherhood — and examines how they are addressed in selected texts. The study contrasts the framing of gender in such literature with the gender imbalance evident in Polish curricula and textbooks, which reveals the systemic underrepresentation and stereotyping of female characters. It highlights the potential of fictional biographies for reclaiming marginalized voices and cultivating intergenerational memory. The article highlights the role of literature in constructing alternative historical narratives (herstory) that promote gender sensitivity, inclusivity, and critical engagement with the past.

Stanislav Rostotsky’s Dozhivem do ponedel’nika (We’ll Live Till Monday, 1968), which established the “school film” canon, and Aleksei Veledinsky’s Geograf globus propil (The Geographer Drank His Globe Away, 2013), which developed this canon half a century later, are preoccupied with searching for happiness as part of a purposeful life, itself the goal of education. This chapter argues that the two films foreground this search as the pursuit of meaningful time and place through history and geography, the academic disciplines that define humanity in temporal and spatial terms. Making the teacher-image central to the school’s spacetime, the films define happiness chronotopically. The chapter demonstrates the intersection of place and opportune time in the search for happiness and hence argues for serious geographical instruction as a prerequisite for the study of history.

The chapter studies the canonization of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) in the context of Polish culture and argues that the canon issue is threefold in this respect. Firstly, there is Snow White as a canonical fairy tale that is reproduced as a strong cultural image. Secondly, this fairy tale has become part of children’s literature as a contextualized and often censored story that appears in various versions on the markets worldwide. Finally, there is a film fairy tale that belongs to the Disney canon, which entangles Snow White in the expanding American film industry discourse. Since Disney has used (and continues to use) similar centralized marketing strategies in many countries, that canonization of children’s literature is likely to have followed a similar pattern internationally. However, as specific historical and cultural circumstances have impacted the process, the differences in each version may indicate key national characteristics in the canon. These developments can and should be studied for each Disney text and each country in which it was distributed. The chapter focuses on the Polish context, noting that similar canonization processes have probably occurred in many other countries.

Saga o Wiedźminie (The Witcher Saga, 1994–1999, Eng. 2008–2017) by Andrzej Sapkowski is arguably the most popular Polish fantasy novel series and possibly Poland’s globally most recognizable work of fiction, translated into thirty-seven languages worldwide. The Saga chronicles the journey of Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster hunter, as he navigates a meticulously crafted high-fantasy world of moral ambiguity. Owing to its place in the collective imagination, Sapkowski’s work may be situated within multiple canons. This chapter examines how The Witcher Saga can function within the Polish literary canon in school and beyond, how it offers a contemporary perspective on the canon, and how its reception exposes problems with curricula dominated by linguistically archaic and culturally distant nineteenth- and early twentieth-century classics.