The focus of the papers selected for this volume ranges from the establishment of regional and national literatures for the young to the presentation and characterization of youth and adolescence in diverse forms and formats of literature. The changing goals of canonized texts for educational as well as inspirational purposes are reflected in the diversity of historical and cultural policies of instruction and emancipation through literary and poetical works; historical and sociological aspects dominate these questions addressed to individual works as well as to whole literatures designed for children.
On the other hand, the structural properties of children's literature and the actual reception of representative texts by child readers provide an equally fruitful area of psychological, pedagogical or aesthetic investigation. Here the rewriting of different kinds of literatures for the use of children receives as much attention as the creation of works aiming especially at the youthful readership of a given age and area; in this context of critical evaluations a variety of adaptations and reconceptualizations is presented - from medieval Portuguese historiography to Michel Tournier's changing configurations of his own works for different audiences.