Stories have characters — Language, 4–6
A character is someone or something the story follows. Characters can be people, animals or even talking objects, and their choices help the story move.
Who a story follows
A character is the person, animal or thing that we follow in a story. We learn what the character does, wants or feels. A story may have one main character, such as a girl, or several, such as three clever goats.
Why characters matter
A list of events can tell you what happened, but a character gives those events a point of view. If a bear is hungry, finding honey matters; if the bear is sleepy, finding a bed matters more. Stories use characters so we can follow a problem and care about its result.
Following one character
In a story, Mia loses her red ball. First, Mia looks under the chair. Next, she asks her brother. Then, the dog carries the ball out of the garden. Mia follows the dog and gets it back. We can track the story by asking what Mia does next and why.
The trap: a character need not be human
You may look only for a person when someone asks for the characters, because people are the usual characters in real life. But a talking fox, a lonely robot or a brave spoon can be a character too. What matters is that the story follows it, not that it is human.
Characters beyond books
You meet characters in picture books, cartoons, plays and pretend games. When you tell a friend about a film, saying the character's name helps your friend know who you mean. When you pretend to be a shopkeeper or astronaut, you are trying out a character's part.
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