Challenges of child-implied reader in children narrative fiction

This paper examines the role of the child as an implied reader in the children narrative fiction. This highlights some crucial questions. First, there are no clear-cut definitions by the theorists for the peculiar kinds of readers. Second, there is no distinguishable difference between the real and implied readers. Third, what are the differences and similarities between real readers and narrative audiences or at best, narratees? Forth, if the implied reader remains a concept in the mind of the real author, is it necessary to be taken into account at all? Fifth, does the real author just deal with one reader to make out of it an ideal picture in the mind? Sixth and not the least, due to such challenges, how is it possible to talk about the concept of the child as an implied reader? This paper aims to redefine and conceptualize the concept of the implied reader in the children narrative fiction, giving a new, much more complete version of that concept through modifying the narrative communicative model, and finally adding the child-implied reader as a new necessary component to that model. This said, the child-implied reader has rarely been taken into consideration in the concurrent literature especially in Iran, though it may help to pave the way for both writing and criticizing children literature