Implied Reader in Zakaria Tamer's Children Stories: Aidan Chamber's Theory

Children’s literature needs to be criticized as the other literary genres; a criticism that takes the child into account and helps him to precept the story better. Aidan Chambers has presented a criticism method that takes the child into account as the reader and places him in the story. In fact, when writing the story, the author addresses someone, the implied reader. This method notes that the writer or the author, makes a relation with the reader in the text, and consciously and sometimes unconsciously creates a picture of himself and of the reader. Hence, the meaning of the text could be understood. This article wants to analyze different components of implied reader like style, point of view, favoritism and talking gaps, in some of the short stories from “Why the River Fell Silent?” and “The Flower Spoke to the Bird” story collections by Zakaria Tamer, the contemporary Syrian author, with descriptive-analytic and statistic approaches. The results show considering the components of implied reader, Tamer has paid lots of attention to use simple words and short sentences appropriate for children. Choosing appropriate point of view, siding with children and right interaction with them, are some of the other characteristics of these stories. In addition, Tamer transfer the stories’ messages like friendship and helping fellows, contentment, responsibility, protection of privacy and etc. by focusing on the moment of change in the life of the characters and choosing appropriate pictures for it.