After the October Revolution of 1917, the impetus to control authorship, the potential of children's literature as a creative medium, and the desire to communicate their visions to child-readers and their parents drew many ideologues to children's literature. Political figures, pedagogues, bureaucrats, authors, and illustrators entered into a public debate about what form a Soviet children's literature should assume. This interdisciplinary study integrates original Russian archival research, scholarship in Russian cultural and social history, and theoretical studies of children's literature...