Vol. 14 No. 2 (2018)

Issue 14 is devoted to the study of academic and publishing commentary on children's literature. “Keys from the inheritance” that modern commentators select for Soviet children's literature, the motives, and pragmatics of using these keys are the main topics of the issue. The widespread opinion that commentary for children is a special kind of commentary designed to explain to children what is incomprehensible in the text (that is, in fact, to interpret the unclear content) has recently been radically revised. Comments are increasingly becoming a way to convey to young readers an adult position on the Soviet (or other) past, eventually turning from a textological commentary into a commentary that sets the normative reading of the text, pedagogical in the broad sense of the word. Another aspect, stated on the pages of the current volume of Children's Readings, is children's literature as a legitimate academic commentary object. The issue includes articles offering examples of just such studies: an academic commentary on the Soviet children's literature.