A Gaze Trained on the Horizon. Children’s Books in the Low Countries

What is children’s literature? Does it actually exist? And if it exists, how does it relate to adult literature? Is a children’s book just meant for children and, if so, should it be written specifically for the target group and judged as such? Or is a good children’s book one written with literary devices to be criticised according to text and image and only considered a success if adults, too, can appreciate it? Under the motto that pedagogical principles and target groups are foreign to the nature of literature? By the end of the 20th century this battle seemed to have been settled in favour of the literature camp.