مریم جلالی

Children and adolescent literature in Iran is still a developing field. Studies in the field of children's literature are interdisciplinary and include fields of psychology, social sciences, Persian literature, and educational sciences. Limited studies exist on the challenges of children's literature in Iran. The aim of this study is to extract the components of "content challenges in children and adolescents’ fiction" considering the current situation.The current study was conducted using qualitative content analysis. The study is an applied research and adopts an inductive approach and employed the interview method for data collection. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 people who were subject experts, authors, and key informants. After documenting the interviews, semantic units were extracted as codes, then were grouped and categorized. Initially, 186 codes were collected. After removing duplicates, the total number of codes decreased to 117. Finally, by merging and combining the codes, the final number reached 48. These 48 codes were classified into five main components and 24 sub-components The content analysis of the interview texts showed the challenges of children's fiction in five main components, these components are 1- translated stories; 2- content production; 3- Author or Authorship; 4- The role of governance; 5- social and cultural conditions of society. Analysis and review of the opinions of experts in the field of children and adolescents’ literature showed that, despite the fact that the number of copies of books published in the field of children and adolescents in the country is increasing, and there are numerous challenges in the field of children and adolescents’ fiction. The challenges in various areas such as the content of works, the role of governance, writing, and translated works require attention, planning, and policy-making of the major authorities. Given the intergenerational role adolescents play in both receiving and transmitting social and cultural concepts, any indifference in this process can lead to numerous future cultural and social challenges. Therefore, knowing that the youth fiction in Iran is evolving, there is a need to pay more attention to the challenges found out in the research.