Children's literature, bad books and ideas

In an article (Children's Literature by Feroza Jussawalla in College Literature, October 1997) otherwise marked by academic gibberish and predetermined strawmen imposed willy-nilly upon reality, Feroza Jussawalla quotes this line from Peter Hunt from his book An Introduction to Children's Literature, my emphasis added:

Children's literature is a powerful literature, and . . . such power cannot be neutral or innocent, or trivial. This is especially true because the books are written by and made available to children, by adults .. Equally obviously, the primary audience is children, who are less experienced and less educated into their culture than adults.

I think this is in part the answer to an enduring conundrum presented to book enthusiasts when assaulted with the charge that books are dangerous because of the ideas or prejudices or values that they transmit. (And to be clear, this is an equal opportunity charge coming as it does from either left or right.) The conundrum is that as soon as one advances the belief, indeed the conviction, of the importance of books to children - as most bibliophiles do - then one must accept that books can have negative consequences as well as positive consequences.

I believe the charge to be true, books are a potentially powerful influence either for good or bad, but that the bibliophiles answer lies in Hunt's statement "books are written by and made available to children, by adults." Bad values, or stereotypes, or prejudice, or facts received via books are not inherently corruptive - it is the context in which they are received, and vis-a-vis children, the mediation of parents and adults that determines whether the ideas, values, etc. are affirmative or corruptive in nature.

It is important for a child to have their parents shaping the portfolio of books to which they are exposed (and in what sequence) and it is important for there to be reasonable variety which would include variety not only in subject, style, genre, etc. but also in terms of issues, values, and ideas. The impact of those ideas are substantially filtered through the prior influence of the parent in shaping the child's weltanschauung as well as the discussion the parent might have about those ideas as the child reads. It is not the book in itself that might be the problem but rather the environment and context in which it is read.