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Literary Element - Character

Character refers to a person, animal or object in a story. Characters are well-developed, believable and consistent.  At the beginning of a story a conflict is presented for the main character to resolve. By the end of a story, a character should change or grow somehow.  This could be by learning something new or by growing in understanding of self.

Ways to Know a Character

• Appearance

  • how the character looks

  • how the character dresses

• Thoughts and conversation

  • what the character says, thinks, or feels

  • what others in the story say or think about the character

• Actions

  • what the character does

  • what the character chooses not to do

  • what others in the story do to the main character

Good characters are:

• believable

• consistent     

• multidimensional, that is, not stereotyped

• memorable

• grow or change over time

Readers who want to understand character can ask:

• Are the characters believable?  Have you ever felt like this character,  or have you known anyone who felt like this character?  What about the character seemed real and true?

•  Is each character’s behavior consistent with what we know about him or her?  Does the behavior remain consistent throughout the book?  Is the change that occurs in the character (reasonable)?

• Does the character’s behavior show that the character is a unique individual (or is the behavior stereotypical)?

• Do you identify with the character?  How would you have reacted if you were the character?

• Does the character change or learn as the story progresses?  Does the character reach a new understanding about the situation or about life?

• Is the character memorable? Will you remember this character in a month?

Suggested Books:

CHARACTER K-3

Becker, Bonny.  A visitor for bear.  Candlewick Press, 2008. Bear's efforts to keep out visitors to his house are undermined by a very persistent mouse.

DiCamillo, Kate.  Bink & Gollie.  Candlewick Press, 2010. Two roller-skating best friends-one tiny, one tall-share three comical adventures involving outrageously bright socks, an impromptu trek to the Andes, and a most unlikely marvelous companion.

Gay, Marie-Louis.  Roslyn Rutabaga and the biggest hole on Earth. Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2010. Roslyn Rutabaga, a little rabbit with a wild imagination, sets out one day determined to dig the biggest hole on Earth, and meets all sorts of irritating obstacles along the way.

Helakoski, Leslie.  Woolbur.  Harper Collins Publishers, 2008. Woolbur, a young sheep who thinks differently than the others, worries his mother and father with his free-spiritedness, but his grandfather thinks he will be fine.

Long, Loren.  Otis.  Philomel Books, 2009. When a big new yellow tractor arrives, Otis the friendly little tractor is cast away behind the barn, but when trouble occurs Otis is the only one who can help.

CHARACTER 4-6

Kelly, Jacqueline.  The evolution of Calpurnia Tate.  Henry Holt, 2009. In central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather, the latter of which leads to an important discovery.

Look, Lenore.  Alvin Ho: allergic to girls, school, and other scary things.  Yearling, 2008.  A young boy in Concord, Massachusetts, who loves superheroes and comes from a long line of brave Chinese farmer-warriors, wants to make friends, but first he must overcome his fear of everything.

O’Connor, Barbara.  The small adventures of Popeye and Elvis.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.  In Fayette, South Carolina, the highlight of Popeye's summer is learning vocabulary words with his grandmother until a motor home gets stuck nearby and Elvis, the oldest boy living inside, joins Popeye in finding the source of strange boats floating down the creek.

Philbrick, W.R.  The mostly true adventures of Homer P. Figg.  Blue Sky Press, 2009. Homer P. Figg escapes from his wretched foster home in Pine Swamp, Maine, and sets out to find his beloved older brother, Harold, who has been illegally sold into the Union Army.

Wiles, Deborah.  Countdown.  Scholastic Press, 2010. As eleven-year-old Franny Chapman deals with drama at home and with her best friend in 1962, she tries to understand the larger problems in the world after President Kennedy announces that Russia is sending nuclear missiles to Cuba.

Lessons:

Identifying Elements of Character - Grades K-3 - Students will learn about the literary element of character through discussion and a graphic organizer.

Updated by Joan DePrenger, Devin Redmond and Michael Schlitz
February, 2011

This page was last updated on February 04, 2011.