This paper discusses translated books for children and teenagers present in – and absent from – the Polish school curricula. A translation may be quite popular with readers, yet not included in the curriculum. The author tries to ascertain the reasons behind the positive and negative choices of school canon makers and the patterns such choices reveal. Factors examined include: un/suitability for the target-culture taste, setting good/bad example, political expectations, attitude towards the source culture, genre characteristics, date of translation (with respect to the appearance of other literary works), and translation quality. Examples from various traditions (German, Russian, Swedish, Anglo-Saxon, Italian, Hungarian) are given and connections are made with translational issues.