This article examines the discursive shifts in the story "The Fairy Who Wouldn't Fly," written and illustrated by Pixie O'Harris in 1945 and then retold by David Harris in 1974. The article examines the changes between the 1940s and the 1970s in the broader social world, in particular the ways the correction of children (or bringing children into the social) is understood. The concepts of subjection, governmentality and agency are used to inform this analysis. The aspect of becoming literate that involves learning how to comprehend oral stories and how to decode graphic signs is analysed as integral to children's "subjection" in specific historical moments. The analysis provides an example of how teachers might analyse the texts they work with in order to make visible the forms of governmentality they are caught up in when teaching literacy.