Talking Animals In Children Literature

Children's Literature is becoming more and more important in today's society. "Talking animals", characters once taboo in literature, are now widely accepted as a means of teaching and entertaining young children. Interestingly, these anthropomorphic characters connect with children and become more beloved than human or child characters. Now with our new technology, even films are being made regarding talking animals. Our paper will try and answer questions related to this topic, such as the motive of a writer to write talking animal stories for children, when the idea for such writing began, why these stories are popular with children, whether they have any teaching value, and how they influence culture today. We decided to use the most popular and representative work as an example to explore our questions regarding the popularity and importance of talking animal stories, and so we chose Winnie-the-Pooh to sufficiently express that talking animal stories have a great importance to the modern world and are beneficial to children in their rites of passage into the adult world, a world that is reflected within these beloved works.

Children’s Literature is a relatively new genre of literature in comparison, developing with the ideas of childhood and its psychological stages. “It was not until around the eighteenth century that children’s literature as we know it-books written and published specifically for children’s enjoyment as well as their edification-finally emerged.” (Russell 8) Talking animals in children’s literature is a motif that has only begun to appear in the last two centuries due to religious attempts to stop children from hearing stories that broke the laws of nature, or God. “…most writers of the time cond...

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...childhood days. That is how important a anthropomorphic children’s book can be.

Talking animals in Children’s Literature may have grown quickly. But it is not a passing fad. The reasons behind the popularity and importance of talking animal stories can be easily summarized. Winnie-the-Pooh marks the beginning of these embraced stories of talking animals for children, we can only wish that works later written will be half as valuable as it has become. But we do know that it is through these works that attract children instantaneously that children learn about the ways of the grown-ups and valuable moral lessons they will need throughout life. Winnie-the-Pooh was successful in doing just that, and by a brief study of Winnie-the-Pooh we understand that talking animals can hold such a great importance to the children today and the adults looking back on their childhoods.