According to a prof I had who taught a course in Children's Literature in 1973, when that subgenre was still going strong (and when schools were still shoving I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN down kids' throats in high school lit classes), he said it was a very important evolution in literature meant to teach kids that religion was all = Tooth Fairy etc, and an introduction to existentialism, which was the culmination of human philosophy. This thinking, or similar strands, were to be met with in all literature courses through my college years. The only time you could get away from existentialism was if you copped hard to Marxism. "The Marxist views in Chaucer, Marxism, the proletariat, and Piers Plowman, A Marxist examination of JANE EYRE was the ONLY way you could avoid having to write yet another paper on existentialist view of all these. And of course the only contemporary lit we read was yet more of this view.