Wooden characters in children's literature

The paper analyses four characters ofliterary fairy tales: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, The Golden Key or The Adventures of Buratino by Alexei Tolstoy, The Magic Inkpot by Mykolas Sluckis and A Tale of the Forest by Eduardas Mieželaitis. Their common feature, at first sight, is only a wooden body; however, some similar inner characteristics should be noticed. All those characters represent the child's behaviour and mentality. The most influential work is The Adventures of Pinocchio; the didactic nature of the work can be traced in other works, although didacticism is softened and modified. The adventurous plot of the works is also their common characteristic. A Tale of the Forest by Mieželaitis represents the new stage of development of the Lithuanian Children's literature. Children's literature in the 1980s, by using the so called Aesop's language, dared to raise more complicated, even politically dangerous ideas. The protagonist of the work partly represents resistance and revolt. The "birth" of the character is also different: he was not simply carved of a piece of wood; he is an offspring of a lonely woman and a mythic creature, who mainly represents Nature. That is why the character is more metaphorical, more sophisticated, compared with Pinocchio and Buratino