Politics and children’s authors

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Perhaps the most frustrating experience in reading is to fall in love with the first book in a children’s series, only to have the series then fall into nothing more than blatant political propaganda. Politics may have a place in books, but that place is not literature for children.

This did actually happen to me recently. I stayed up all night reading the first of a series and then found myself unable to wait for the next book – which I soon picked up (in fact, I was so excited for the second book that I downloaded the free first chapter sample to my Kindle). The further and further I got into the book, the more I recognized the communistic agenda being pressed (it did indeed feel like the author shoving his/her hand down my throat to make me accept his/her ideas).


Now did the author know (s)he was propagating communism? Probably not by that name, but (s)he cannot have been ignorant of how (s)he completely skewed and distorted the reality of the world (s)he had created for his/her characters. Further reading revealed an anti-religious crusade as well. I’m even okay with these concepts getting presented in children’s books (Phillip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials is often credited as anti-Christain, afterall – and check out his thoughts on book meanings), but not when the entire purpose of the story becomes the belittling of religion or the promotion of an economic system.

Someone might wonder why that would bug me so much. An author has the right to write whatever (s)he wants to, right? If we don’t like a story, we don’t have to buy or read the book. And yes, that’s true. But it’s also true that an author should remain true to the story (s)he is telling, and it’s clear in the case of said author that (s)he did not. Instead, (s)he saw the success of the first book and decided to use the rest of the series to promote a hateful agenda disguised as kindness and altruism.


If an author has an agenda in the story (s)he writes, it should not place the rest of the story in a stranglehold. And especially in children’s literature – it gets annoying when people claim many children are brainwashed by their parents, and then those same people try and brainwash those same children into believing their (that person’s) political viewpoints and negative outlooks on life. No, we don’t have to but garbage writing, but why is it getting published professionally to begin with? Or how does it get past editors with such large problems? I hope we’re not so commercialized that vomit could be printed and sold as a novel.

Besides, agendas in children’s books do not make great writing. Yes, politics can be present, as in the case of Harry Potter. The ministry’s interference (and lack of participation) in Hogwarts and the end of Voldemort is essential to establishing that Harry Potter truly does only have his friends to help him. In that story, politics serves to distance Harry, not to promote an agenda.

But a person could ask “What of Hermione’s Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare?” And that person would have a good point. Here’s the difference: the liberation front does not determine the outcome of the story – not even of the specific books in which it is mentioned. When a political agenda drives the children’s story, then it has failed to be a story; it has merely become garbage propaganda. Themes are okay, but as I’ve said in many ways already, themes do not a story make.


And to anyone who’s wondering why the random-seeming rant: I loved the first book in that series so much that I just knew I’d love the other ones. So I bought the entire series – what a waste of money. Stories of that sort just don’t belong in a genre for children. Technology aside, why do you think we struggle to get children to read if it’s not because of the obvious agendas pressed in books?

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