Jacqueline Rose defines children's literature as a "seduction" or "colonization" of the child into an imposition of the adult ideal of childhood (qtd. in Redcay). Criticism of children's literature and all research on children is developed by adults who talk about children based on the assumption that children are inherently weaker and cannot speak for themselves, just as colonizers speak for the colonized. There is a distortion in the way childhood is perceived and represented, as well as how it is presented as an adult would remember it, and also in the ideal that an adult had of childhood. Based on this premise it is easy to assume that all the stories that children are told and the stories that they themselves begin to tell are manipulative in the sense that they inculcate the adult's worldview in the child. Early narration transfers the language, the richness of the cultural context and the ways it transmits to the child. These then become part of their memories and collective consciousness and children begin to look to stories to help them understand adult behaviour. “For children, stories are metaphors, especially in the realm of feelings, for which they do not yet have single words” (Introduction Meek 2). The attitudes of older generations therefore inevitably influence those that a child might develop simply by being exposed to these attitudes through the stories that adults choose to tell children. To borrow Althusser's concept, the collective of “Ideological State Apparatuses” contributes to the ideology that future adults should follow. This is obviously keeping in mind that ISAs include narratives for children. Stereotypical portrayals of characters lead to children... middle of paper... As children grow, stereotypes become internalized and lead to the continuation of prejudices held and propagated by the majority against the minority. A postcolonial reading of texts such as Kipling's The Jungle Book is necessary to clarify how Eurocentric prejudices influence the stories that are told and the processes of cultural identity construction. No depiction will ever be completely accurate, and Kipling's love of India mixed with his imperialist approach distinctly colors what might otherwise pass off as an innocent coming-of-age tale. The colonial mentality must be made familiar so that children can embrace it and dismantle imperialist structures. This can be made possible through their understanding of the world promoted through books that allow for the representation of cultures by those who belong to them.