The thesis explores the role of animals in the selected corpus of children's animalistic literature: Maya the Bee (Waldemar Bonsels), Bambi (Felix Salten), The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling), The Wild Horse (Božidar Prosenjak), The Bear Clutch (Maja Gluščević), Humandel (Hrvoje Hitrec), The Don from Tromeš (Višnja Stahuljak), The Love Case of Jojo the Cat (Branka Primorac), Dolphin Dirik and The Lazy Mare (Horvat Joe), The Lip-Reading Dog (Stjepan Tomaš), The Crobinhoods (Dunja Kalilić). Along with the historical display of literary animalism, the analysis of the Romanesque plan of expression and content were made. The role and type of the narrator and the plot structure was studied, the relationship of not only animal and child characters but also of animal and adult characters was interpreted. Furthermore, the role of animals as pets was analyzed, the role of wild animals, animals in warfare and animal interrelations, ranging from friendship, rivalry, through motherhood, paternity to love and sexuality. The diversity of literary animalism in the mode of presentation (anthropomorphism, zoomorphism) and the selection of animals (dogs, cats, insects, cows, horses dolphins, bears) point to the eternal connection of humans/children and animals to the different needs for human "possession" of animals (loyalty, friendship, therapeutic role, play, abuse), but also the need for learning about the world through different animalistic literary topics, including the animalistic Christian symbolism.