Contemporary Czech Literature for Children and Young People

Since the beginning of the modern age – more specifically, since the time known as the National Revival (the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries) – writing for children and young people has had an important part to play in the literary output of the Czech lands. Indeed, the first “Revival” generation was especially appreciative of the importance of literature for young people.

Following their emancipation, Czech language and literature in the modern age had to battle for continued existence; it was at this time that the earliest attempts were made to push literature for young people to the margins of the new national literature. This tendency was never very influential, although periodically it excited mighty quarrels over what literature for children should strive to embody. Men of letters engaged in a great theoretical debate as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, and again the special nature of children’s literature was a subject of intensive investigation in the years immediately following World War II. In the last half-century, Czech writing for children has found itself subject to frequent contradictions. In the 1960s it attracted a range of special talents – both writers and illustrators – and a decade or so later there was a new wave of important authors. Many of these authors turned to children’s writing because the politics of the time made it impossible for them to address an adult readership: writing for young people was more or less their only outlet.

The situation changed dramatically after 1989. It was not only that the limitations imposed by the regime from without had disappeared; often the reasons for particular writers to address a child audience had melted away. Initially there was a continued outflow of work, much of which had earlier been proscribed by the authorities or had been written in exile. But by the mid-1990s it was becoming abundantly clear that the strength of the generation whose experience of totalitarianism had shaped its art, was not being matched by that of the newcomers. In the 1980s the individual genres of children’s writing were expanded and enriched by beginning writers; now it was clear that the impulses were no longer so nourishing.

Although in recent years this unhappy situation has been subject to improvement, the shortage of emerging children’s writers of importance has persisted to the present day. The erosion of the dominance of writers and illustrators of the older generation is proving to be a slow process.

A further significant problem is posed by the low level of public interest in writing for children (and appreciations of this). Over the past decade regular reviews of works for children have disappeared from the pages of the daily press; these days, the only reliable – if irregular – source of information on writing for children is public-service radio (more specifically, Czech Radio 3/Vltava, the remit of which to produce culture-based programming). Literary periodicals interest themselves almost solely in works for adult readerships; a notable exception to this is the quarterly Ladění [Tuning], which since the demise of Zlatý máj [Golden May] has been alone in heralding good new works and criticizing works of lesser quality. There are further absences to be noted: a companion to Czech literature for children and young people, a history which includes recent works, a work of reference to record areas of crossover with other arts and genres, such as film, radio and the visual arts.

On an emphatically positive note, Czech writing can rejoice in the wide range of publishing houses which produces titles for children and young people. The Albatros house, which had had a near-monopoly on the market, succeeded in absorbing the far-reaching socio-economic changes of the early 1990s; this decade also witnessed the emergence of other imprints of distinction, such as Baobab, Brio and Meandr.

Martin Reissner

Tschechische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur

La littérature tchèque pour enfants et pour la jeunesse

More in English

HOLEŠOVSKÝ, František et al. Czech and Slovak essays on children’s literature. Bremen: K-Presse , 1973.

CHALOUPKA, Otakar. Czech literature for children: Its development and present output. Prague: Dilia, 1980.

SYROVÁTKOVÁ, Helena. History of Czech literature for children.

More (only in Czech) in JANÁČKOVÁ, Blanka. Přehled vývoje literatury pro děti a mládež (Ústí nad Labem: Univerzita J. E. Purkyně, 2009).