THE GENRE OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Genre is a category of literary composition. It is a specific Category of artistic or literary accomplishment by form, technique and subject matter. Children’s literature has deserved its own genre to show a difference between the adult literatures in other terms the young adolescent literature (YA lit). The variety of books with different content created for Children on their interest are classified into separate categories. Children’s books are generally classified by the following genre illustrated in the table.

Genres of Children’s Literature

Poetry

Prose

Nursery rhymes

Lyric poems

Narrative poems

Fiction

Non fiction

Fantasy

Realism

Concept books(including counting books)

Information books

Biographies

Folk Literature

Modern fantasy

Realistic Fiction

Myths

Epics

Legends

Fables

Fairy tales

Literary fairy tales

Animal fantasy

Magical fantasy

Heroic fantasy

Science fiction

Family stories

Friendship

Adventure/survival stories

Mysteries

Animal stories

Sports stories

Historical stories

The selected short stories “The Blue Umbrella, the Angry River, the Dust on the Mountain” falls under the category of Realistic Fiction .Realistic Stories are didactic in nature, they teach morality and manners as well as entertain and educate. Experiences of Children are dual in nature, days of happiness and nights of sorrows. The younger generation of this world expects the protagonists to be real heroes and over comers of different entanglements. Real life situations are ready to be ventured by the children. These Realistic fictions refer to stories that could happen to mankind or would happen to people in the future. Marshall (1998) considers various components of realism in Literature:

Factual realism- descriptions of facts about actual people, class, and places are recorded accurately in a book. Situational realism- realism provided by situation that is not only possible but also likely to happen with identifiable characters making the events believable. Survival stories of life threatening situations are examples that are included in situational realism. Emotional realism- stories that deals with feelings and relationships. Social Realism- fictions that portray the society in both healthy and adverse conditions. Contemporary Realism-stories that describes the present condition focusing on social hazards such as alcoholism, racism, poverty, calamities and homelessness, mental disabilities, alienation from the main stream of society. In general, realistic fictions deal with topics drawn from all a