The aim of this esseay is to analyse the configuration of the literary child in Henning Mankells Comedia Infantil and Harry Martinssons Flowering Nettle. The teoretical outset is interdisciplinary, informed by both literarystudies and childstudies adopting a psycho-social perspective which allows a reading of the childprotagonists inside as well as outside preconditions and how these are constructed in the texts. The narratological concepts of focalization is used to investigate in detail how the narrator and narrative constructs a childperspectiveand conception of childhood. A point of interest is also to examine how the novels relate to the idea of the innocent or/and the competent child.