This article examines the political polarization between Republicans and Islamists in Turkey as reflected in the peritexts of recent translations of world children's literature. This is reflected in terms of van Dijk's notions of an us vs them binarism, where a positive in-group is opposed to a negative out-group representation. In this way, the construction of an anti-Western (and pro-Islamist) ideology can be seen, regardless of the content of the actual literary works themselves.