Multiculturalism

• The 20th century saw a huge shift in social attitudes toward race and other cultures, thanks to movements like the Civil Rights struggle in the U.S. and mass immigration to countries such as the United Kingdom. Not only that, but children's fiction written by international authors became more accepted in these countries. The result was a move away from the predominantly white-dominated world of 19th-century children's literature to a multicultural genre that better reflected the ethnic makeup of young readers.
  
  

20th Century Wars

• The 20th century saw its fair share of conflicts, and in terms of children's literature, the two World Wars were of particular significance. Not only did these major conflicts inspire children's stories such as Ian Serraillier's "The Silver Sword," they also altered the landscape of children's literature. As the 20th century progressed, children's literature began to contain more elements of magical realism, a literary genre that melds both the realistic and the fantastic. Authors like Susan Cooper, whose masterpiece is "The Dark Is Rising," wrote books that combined the mythical with the everyday. Critic Teya Rosenberg attributes this trend to the mixture of the normal and the strange that citizens experienced during the World Wars.
  
  

Imagery

• Children's literature encompasses a wide array of genres, and one of these is the picture book, in which a story is told either entirely in images or via a combination of images and words. While such works existed before the 20th century, they developed and became more popular over this period, thanks to the efforts of the likes of Kate Greenaway and Robert Lawson in the first half of the century, and Eric Carle and Maurice Sendak in the latter part. Technologies involved in producing picture books evolved too, with artists using a mix of traditional mediums and computer-generated graphics by the end of the 20th century.
  
  

Sense of Opposing Sides

• Another theme to emerge during the 20th century within children's literature was a sense that the world is made up of a series of opposing forces, for example good and evil, order and chaos, light and dark. This theme can be seen in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series for instance, where the villain Voldemort represents pure evil, while his adversary Harry is fighting for the side of good. This theme may have developed partly as the result of texts such as J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," which feature such dichotomies, as well as the experiences of authors in the conflicts of the age.