f the Communist Party. With a children's branch, the official oversight of the professional organization brought children's writers under the control of the state and the police. Communist principles like collectivism and solidarity became important themes in children's literature. Authors wrote biographies about revolutionaries like Lenin and Pavlik Morozov. Alexander Belyayev, who wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, became Russia's first science fiction writer.[1]:770 According to Ben Hellman in the International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, "war was to occupy a

ound the same time, and scientists wrote for books and magazines for children. Children's magazines flourished, and by the end of the century there were 61. Lidia Charskaya and Klavdiya Lukashevich continued the popularity of girls' fiction. Realism took a gloomy turn by frequently showing the maltreatment of children from lower classes. The most popular boys' material was Sherlock Holmes, and similar stories from detective magazines.[1]:768
The state took control of children's literature during the October Revolution. Maksim Gorky edited the first children's, Northern Lights, under Soviet rule. People often label the 1920s as the Golden Age of Children's Literature in Russia.[1]:769 Samuil Marshak led that literary decade as the "founder of (Soviet) children's literature".[37]:193 As head of the children's section of the State Publishing House and editor of several children's magazines, Marshak exercised enormous influence by[37]:192–193 recruiting Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam to write for children.
In 1932, professional writers in the Soviet Union formed the USSR Union of Writers, which served as the writer's organization of the Communist Party. With a children's branch, the official oversight of the professional organization brought children's writers under the control of the state and the police. Communist principles like collectivism and solidarity became important themes in children's literature. Authors wrote biographies about revolutionaries like Lenin and Pavlik Morozov. Alexander Belyayev, who wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, became Russia's first science fiction writer.[1]:770 According to Ben Hellman in the International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, "war was to occupy a prominent place in juvenile reading, partly compensating for the lack of adventure stories", during the Soviet Period.[1]:771 More political changes in Russia after World War II brought further change in children's literature. Today, the field is in a state of flux because some older authors are being rediscovered and others are being abandoned.[1]:772
India[edit]


A Tagore illustration of a Hindu myth
Christian missionaries first established the Calcutta School-Book Society in the 19th century, creating a separate genre for children's literature in that country. Magazines and books for children in native languages soon appeared.[1]:808 In the latter half of the century, Raja Shivprasad wrote several well-known books in Hindustani.[1]:810 A number of respected Bengali writers began producing Bengali literature for children including Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who translated some stories and wrote others himself. Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore wrote plays, stories, and poems for children, including one work illustrated by painter Nandalal Bose. They worked from the end of the 1800s into the beginning of the 20th-century. Tagore's work was later translated into English, with Bose's pictures.[1]:811 Behari Lal Puri was the earliest writer for children in Punjabi. His stories were didactic in nature.[1]:815


The Crescent Moon by Rabindranath Tagore illus. by Nandalal Bose, Macmillan 1913.
The first full-length children's book was Khar Khar Mahadev by Narain Dixit, which was serialized in one of the popular children's magazines in 1957. Other writers include Premchan