prize, the Caldecott Medal, the first award for distinguished work in picture-books, was
established in 1938.) Other notable contributions of North America in this field have
been the first specialist reviewing periodical for children’s books—The Horn Book
Magazine established by Bertha M.Miller and Elinor W.Field in 1924, the Children’s
Book Section of the Library of Congress, with Virginia Haviland, a former children’s
librarian at its head, and the Osborne Collection, presented by a British librarian, Edgar
Osborne, to Toronto in 1949.
The complexity of the development of children’s literature, which is traced in the
following chapters, can be demonstrated by a case study, which illustrates the
importance of cultural and political influences.
Cyprus provides a convenient bridge between Europe and the Middle East.
Geographically close to Turkey, its children’s literature has strong connections with
Greece, and most of the available information comes from the southern, Greek part of
the island which, in 1984, hosted the nineteenth IBBY Congress.
A literature for children first appeared in Cyprus at the beginning of the twentieth
century when newspapers, magazines and books were produced for use in schools. A few
books for children’s leisure reading appeared before the Second World War, such as Our
Son by Tefkros Anthias in the late 1930s, but a literature really began to develop a few
years before independence in 1960. In 1959 the Elementary School Teachers’ Union
began to publish a literary magazine, Pediki Chara [Children’s Joy], The establishment
in 1974 of a Cyprus National Section of IBBY was an important landmark.
As Cyprus has a relatively small population, it cannot support a significant publishing
programme and children’s books have always been imported from Greece. Reading
surveys show that Aesop’s Fables, The Iliad and The Odyssey feature in children’s
reading but so do the fairy tales of Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood as well as
classics from Western Europe and the USA. Most of the stories for children published in
Cyprus itself were, until the mid-1970s, fairy tales.
Cyprus was divided in 1974 after President Makarios was overthrown and troops from
Turkey invaded the island, and this coincided with the introduction of a realistic note
into the literature for children. The Wasp Nest and Other Stories (1976) by Spyros
Epaminondas is a humorous story in which the children learn through adventures and
mishaps, but many books reflect the country’s recent and turbulent history. Joys and
Sorrows (1977) by Philisa Hadjihanna is about the difficulties of a displaced family who
are forced to take shelter in a tent and then a refugee camp; each member of the family
recalls the good old days when Greeks and Turks lived happily side by side.
In the 1980s this trend continued. Cypriot writers for children, while pleading for
peace and international understanding, also recorded the conflicts of the past. For
example, in Mikroi Ston Agona [Too Young to Fight] (1986), the story is set in the period
before independence. In O Theodores [Theodore] (1989) Renos Prenzas tells a story
about young boys protesting against the British occupation by throwing stones at the
soldiers, but when the British finally leave the island, Theodore does not know whether
to be glad or sorry; Letters to My Lonely Brother (1987), by Maria Abraamides deals with
the events of the Turkish invasion and the subsequent war. Alongside these realistic
stories, however, there are folk-tales and fairy stories, stories about animals and
entertaining stories of everyday life. Maria Luka’s Istories tes Mikres Philios [Stories of
THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: AN INTRODUCTION 653