Abstract: The paper focuses on the socio-cultural circumstances affecting present production of picture books for children in Poland in context of the past (during communism conditions) and globalization. Picture book is therefore distinct as a meaningful and first position connecting man with culture and useful for identity-formation, while at the same time, the rule states that the primary reader position is almost absolutely taken by adults. This is the main reason of researching all intermediary adults who have influence on the content and form of picture books. I analyze the power/knowledge relations and discourse formations constructing the field of cultural production, distribution and re-production of children’s picture book’s market. In accordance with P. Bourdieu’s concept of the field, I examine a relational network of diverse points of individual and inter-subjective concepts of significance in picture books and also aesthetical judgment (occurring in parents’, early teachers’, children’s and artists’ (illustrators) reflections and experiences) and institutions represented by small- and large-scale editors and publishers from the Polish market of picture books.

The study of mechanisms in the field and its subfields with its power and different point relations, I based on the empirical material collected in Gdańsk and whole Poland during the years 2004-2006. The methodology applied in the project consists mostly on phenomenography (interviews) and discourse analysis - picture book construction, re-production and power relations among institutional (publish houses) and surrounding cultural settings.

Main thesis: - The Polish market of picture books for children has changed into totally liberal, where economic capital dominates over cultural life. - The low quality of content and form of picture books in Poland depends on a socially constructed power of mass aesthetical judgment and adults’ permission for the dominating mass culture.