The Influence of Popular-Culture Spectacularity on the Appearance of New Characters in Croatian Children's Novels

The influences of popular culture are noticed in all aspects of human life, including art. Given the inadequate exploration of the effect of popular culture in the context of children's literature, the paper discusses its interaction with contemporary Croatian children's novels. Specifically, the incursion of popular culture in children's literature was observed in a corpus of 12 children's novels published since 1970, that is, from the time when the pull of popular culture was gaining force in the context of postmodernist change. Therefore, elements of popular culture are introduced in children's novels deliberately to make the titles interesting and attractive to child recipients. However, authors sometimes introduce such features unintentionally, simply because they are immersed in the context of popular culture themselves. The focus of the paper is on the emergence of new characters, constructs of popular culture, whose inclusion in the range of characters of children's literature is inspired by the most prominent popular-cultural feature - spectacularity. Thus, the paper identifies these characters, as well as the ways in which contemporary children's novels shape them.