The publishers’ spring? Mai ’68 and the ‘radical revolution’ in French children’s books

The years around May ’68 (c. 1965-c. late-1970s) are widely understood to represent a watershed moment for children’s books in France, when, as Isabelle Nières-Chevrel put it, “this so-called ‘minor’ literature “revealed it had the power to disturb, to shock and to challenge conventions, thus proving that it could be, in effect, ‘real’ literature.” An important factor was the influence of a new fringe of avant-garde publishers that attracted attention across their trade in and beyond France. These presses were part of a phenomenon which Jean-Marie Bouvaist and Jean-Guy Boin dubbed “the publishers’ spring”, namely the ‘boom’ of small presses which appeared after ’68. Through a structural analysis of the changes that took place in the children’s publishing field in the years around ’68, this essay asks to what extent the children’s publishing trade in France witnessed a ‘radical revolution’ in publishing in the wake of May ’68, when those on the margins of the field profoundly influenced the mainstream presses