Abstract
This thesis demonstrates that the Hispanic children's literature for ages
eight to twelve years old is part of the literature short-story genre, for which the writer
uses a predetermined structure to captivate his/her readers. The analytic model of
children's stories utilized in this study is based on the work of Jorge Eslava, a
Peruvian author of children's literature. To prove that the selected stories by Hispanic
writers reflect a predetermined narrative structure, we focus on four texts: Horacio
Quiroga's "La Guerra de los yacares;" Jacqueline Balcells's "Entre la espada y el
amor;" Care Santos's "El genio Ifigenio: Un rat6n llamado elefante" and Pat Mora's
"Tomas y la dama bibliotecaria."
