Think of your favorite story from when you were young children. Already?. Now think about your son's. Ready?. Could you tell me why you chose those stories and not others?
On the other hand, if we look at the structure of these stories, we will realize that we can verify that there is a series of general characteristics in children's stories
And is that the stories aimed at the smallest audience in the house have characteristics that they share among all of them, and which we will summarize below.
One of those characteristics that share so many children's stories is the continuity and speed of its action. In each paragraph of children's stories something happens without having to resort to a large amount of information to describe it.
On the other hand we have the simplicity of representation, since in most of the stories common elements known to children appear, making the use of imagination easier.
The repetition of the facts It is another common element in children's stories, since it greatly favors the correct understanding of the story by the child.
Too sequence It helps to make the story attractive and easy for the child, since it always has the same scheme.
This universal scheme could be summarized as follows: the protagonists present themselves from the beginning to know who is who in the story. Later a problem appears, that is, something happens in the story that will lead to the intervention of the protagonists described above.
According to the protagonists, there will be an intervention appropriate to the problem that has occurred. The most used is the confrontation before an evil character, causing the problem of history. Finally, the hero wins the wicked, since good always triumphs over evil.
How to choose the right story?
After this we might think: "Ok, if all the stories are the same and have the same general characteristics, it will not matter what story I give to my child."
It is true that any book that we find in the children's literature section of any bookstore will have these four features, but this does not mean that anyone is worth any child.
These general characteristics will facilitate our choice, since we can focus our search more on particular characteristics of each book: vocabulary, images, interest for the child ...
These aspects that make each children's story different from the rest are what we will have to choose according to the age of our child.
As you can see, the existence of a series of general characteristics in children's stories, we must always carefully observe the particular characteristics of each one of them, since it is what really matters to succeed with the purchase of a children's story.
