Children’s Literature As A Political Weapon: The 2018 “Rabbit Affaire”

Abstract

Marlon Bundo's, A Day in the Life of the Vice President and A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo are two children's books addressed to children aged 4-8 and 6-8 years old. They were published in the United States in 2018 by Charlotte Pence, the daughter of the former Republican Vice President, and by Jill Twiss, respectively, the latter also sponsored by Democrat activist John Oliver. Expectedly, the authors have antagonistic political perspectives. The first expresses a traditional and hierarchical view of power and the second -a pro-LGBTQ standpoint. Despite these differences, their speech is both dogmatic in the sense that they more or less explicitly influence the reader's opinion, without respecting children's right to think for themselves. The world both books present is a closed one in the sense that it has no complexityas if everything was black and white. In this paper, I intend to discuss how both republican and democratic authors defend and publicize their different messages with similar speeches and how they verbally and iconically express their views in order to persuade their possible addressees.