• Student: Ivon Huang
• National Pingtung University
• June 2022

Abstract

Reading children’s literature is beneficial to readers, both children and adults, since it makes readers to understand other people’s feelings. Also, young readers can achieve a positive mental thought from observing actions of characters in the children’s books. For readers who want to select qualified children’s literature book for their children, this study analyzed three elements of children’s literature. They are the round characters and the flat charters, two different kinds of conflicts and explicit theme of children’s literature. These elements can be used to find the qualified children’s books.

The famous British children book “The Wind in the Willows” by Grahame, Kenneth (1908) was selected for studying. In this study, the researcher would analyze the elements of children’s literature in The Wind in The Willows. The major finding is that the round characters, such as Toad, would make changes after conflicts. Also, flat characters are also important to the story since they could push the story moving forward. What’s more, round characters are dynamic who have the capacity of changing in the story. This would lead to the explicit theme of the book: the friendship among round characters. These findings proved the qualified children’s literature elements do exist in The Wind in The Willows. It is helpful for people who are interested in children’s literature.

Keywords: children’s literature, conflicts, round character, explicit theme, flat character