Children’s Literature

Children encountered stories long before publishers developed books specifically for them. In traditional elementary schools, known as maktabs, reading included classical prose, poetry, and religious texts. Modern children’s literature emerged as educators asked whether such material matched a child’s language, interests, and stage of development. Late nineteenth-century reform and the subsequent expansion of schooling helped make that question central. s1

Jabbar Baghcheban, an educator associated with early kindergarten education in Tabriz, wrote plays and verse informed by work with children. Later, magazines offered another route into reading beyond schoolbooks. This history matters because children’s literature was shaped by teachers, editors, translators, and illustrators as well as authors. s1

Oral storytelling, including lullabies and family tales, supplied a continuing reservoir of material. The Library of Congress places modern Persian children’s books within a wider Persian-speaking world that includes Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Shared language and narrative traditions should not erase the different national settings in which books were produced. s2

Its exhibition includes Zal and the Phoenix, an Iranian illustrated adaptation of a story from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the Persian epic. The mythical bird Simorgh rescues the abandoned child Zal. Such adaptations demonstrate how a work composed for an earlier audience can be reshaped through selection, illustration, and presentation for younger readers. s2

Translation also enlarged the repertoire. Iranica records Persian versions of The Little Prince and Pinocchio in the 1950s, alongside growing professional attention to illustration and book design. The field therefore developed through both inherited narratives and encounters with writing from elsewhere. s1

The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, commonly called Kanoon, was founded in 1965. Its work connected publishing with original artwork and public libraries. The Library of Congress also documents its involvement in music and animation, showing how books belonged to a broader cultural program for young people. s1s2

The Children’s Book Council occupies a different institutional position. The International Board on Books for Young People, or IBBY, identifies it as Iran’s national section and describes a nonprofit organization founded in 1962. Its stated objectives include supporting original literature and translation, evaluating books, advising adults who work with children, and improving distribution and library services. These are organizational aims, not independent measurements of national access or reading achievement. s3

Access depends on more than whether a title exists. In its 2016 award announcement, IBBY described Iran’s Read With Me program as combining book provision, reading aloud, creative activities, adult training, and small libraries. Its intended readers included children in remote communities and disadvantaged urban settings. Read With Me was one of that year’s IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award winners. s4

The program offers a concrete example of how reading can be organized as a shared activity. However, an award announcement describes an approach and recognizes a project; it does not establish lasting educational effects. For an international reader, this distinction helps connect literary achievement with the separate questions of distribution, mediation, and opportunity to read. s4

The Read With Me approach described in 2016

The arrows summarize elements of the program described by IBBY. They indicate intended support relationships, not measured causal effects.