This book deals with cultural manipulations. It presents the question of who is culturally responsible for children's literature as a literary product of society. It asks how it is possible to understand the behavior of children's literature as an integral part of culture and why it is so fruitful to do so. It also inquires into children's literature in the broadest possible context -- in its multirelations with social norms, literary norms, educational norms -- hence suggesting new possibilities to illuminate the field from these angles. The author discusses the functioning of children's literature as a component of cultural systems and treats cardinal historical (yet dynamic) issues of children's literature in complicated perspectives. The following questions are raised: Why is children's literature, unlike adult literature, regarded as part of both the educational and the literary systems at one and the same time? What are the implications of this double attribution? How does it affect the development, structure, textual options, readers and writers of children's literature? How and to what extent do notions of childhood determine the character of the texts for the child on the level of poetic norms, as well as in regard to the acceptance of the texts by the "people of culture"? Furthermore, it asks how writers for children react to such societal and poetic demands in producing their texts.