Harvey Darton's definition of children's books as "works produced ostensibly to give children spontaneous pleasure and not merely to teach them" no longer holds good in contemporary children's literature today since the emphasis in contemporary children's literature has shifted from merely giving pleasure to offering children insights into the complexities of life. Till the 1970's, Britain's writers of children's fiction have been creating comfort zones for their readers by basing their books on pure fantasy. The paper seeks to establish how the new children's narrative is cognate in form and style with the modern psychological novel with its complex techniques and its emphasis on the inner workings of the mind and the character's search for his/her identity. This has become the preferred form of children's narrative today