In the mid-20th century, the Pahlavi government began an exciting initiative as part of its state-building activities: eliminating illiteracy. This initiative involved the formation of the Literacy Corps and the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (also known as Kanun), the construction of youth libraries across the country, and partnerships with foreign entities to produce youth literature. The most impactful of these foreign partners was the Franklin Book Program, an American non-profit funded by the U.S. State Department. This program supported indigenous production of literature, with the goal of increasing education worldwide. On the surface, such a goal appears benevolent and laudable. However, set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the ideological underpinnings of the Franklin Book Program become more complicated. This project argues that the Franklin Book Program was a powerful player in the ideological battle for capitalist and communist influence in Iran during the Cold War. In this project, I seek to analyze the significant role that the Franklin Book Program played in the emergence of children’s literature in Iran. I approach this study through the lens of both political economy and cultural studies, as I parse out the financial and political structures, as well as the ideological motivations, that supported the production and distribution of children’s literature. I will examine how the Franklin Book Program (in partnership with the Kanun), garnered the attention of Iran’s youth by translating American and European literature into Persian, publishing Iranian ancient myth-inspired tales, and developing Persian-language youth-oriented periodicals. Following Matt Sienkiewicz’s argument concerning the motivations behind USAID’s funding of media in Palestine and Afghanistan, I suggest that the content produced with the Franklin Book Program’s finances was secondary to the organization’s primary goal. Drawing on the annual reports and internal correspondence of the Franklin Books Program, I argue that first and foremost, the organization sought to aid the economic development of Iran through education, and that this attempt should be viewed through a capitalist framework. In essence, the program sought to establish capitalist structures and mindsets within the Iranian publishing arena. In addition, by analyzing secondary literature and oral histories, I have been able to map the channels of distribution for this material all over Iran, adding an illustrative visual element to this intriguing history.