From April 24–27, 2025, Baia Mare, Romania, hosted the international conference Education, Manipulation, and Propaganda in Literature for Children and Young Adults, bringing together scholars from across disciplines to explore how stories for young audiences have been used - historically and today - as tools of persuasion, ideology, and resistance.

Among the contributors was Ekaterina Shatalova, who presented her paper "ABC Books in the Russia-Ukraine War." Her presentation examined how seemingly innocent alphabet books function as vehicles for early ideological training, comparing recent Russian and Ukrainian examples that reflect sharply diverging narratives of national identity, war, and childhood.