ABSTRACT
Animal stories in all their variety hold a strong place in children’s literature. Two texts in particular have informed my analysis and you may wish to seek them out for further reading. The first is Simon Flynn’s account ‘Animal Stories’, which explores issues of ‘identification’ and ‘defamiliarization’ and traces the development of the animal story through the centuries (Flynn in Hunt, 2004). The second is John Rowe Townsend’s account ‘Articulate Animals’, which includes his reflections on the humanized animals in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (Townsend, 1995: 94-102).
