FROM THE EDITORS

Abstract

The studies presented in the 22nd issue of Children's Readings are varied in their material and broad in their subject matter. On the one hand, they analyze the political, economic, and medical contexts in the history of children's books. The involvement of the Russian parliament in deciding the fate of the elementary school textbook, the concerns of medical hygienists about the quality of printing for children, a large-scale panorama of the canon of children's literature in Soviet times, the modern attempts of non-professional authors to break into the book market of children's literature.

On the other hand, it is a study of the involvement of publishers of children's books (M. Wolf) and their bibliographers (O. Kapitsa and E. B. Martin) in constructing the "visibility" of certain groups of works, in attracting the attention of competent adult consumers to such segments of the book supply for children, which the experts for one reason or another decided to highlight. Third, it is an analysis of the biographical and creative trajectories of writers who have undertaken to write for children. Finally, Sergey Ushakin's reflections on the (unhappy) fate of the sociology of children's reading in Russia provide a critical look at the development of sociological methods for studying children's reading in the USSR.

We would like to draw the readers' attention to the manifesto of a new organization, the European Society of Researchers of Children's Literature.