Children’s ideas about author, characters and narrator

This study aims to understand children’s ideas about three literary terms: author, character and narrator. Eighty children, 6 to 9 years old, from Mexican public schools, were interviewed (following Piaget’s critical-clinical methodology) in mixed pairs. The children discussed six fictional and two informative texts. The interviewer only named the terms when children first mentioned them, upon which the interviewer tried to ascertain the meaning given to the terms. Results show that the youngest children only referred to author (with various meanings), others to author and character, while the oldest made reference to author, character and narrator. We are interested in understanding the conflicts that arise with the appearance of each new term, as well as understanding which terms children apply to informative texts. The results oblige us to consider how these terms are used outside the classroom, as media (e.g. television) influences how children interpret these terms in written texts.