This thesis explores the fable as a literary genre and its place in the children's literature. It also presents the historical development of fables since their beginning as well as the influence they have had in the European literature. Fables traveled from Greece to Rome entering European literature which produced some of the very well-known fable writers such as Jean de La Fontaine, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Ivan Andrejevič Krilov. This literary genre soon appeared in various nations as well Croatia, where several authors such as Ivan Filipović, Rikard Katalinić Jeretov, Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, and Vladimir Halovanić engaged in fable writing. This work views at several Croatian fable writers, with particular focus on certain important features such as differences in motive occurrence in fable writers from different places and eras, differences in phrasing in general, but also in characters and morals. The purpose of this thesis is to show the fable as an extremely didactic and educational literary genre with a powerful influence on children, providing that it is age appropriate and understandable to a child. For this very reason, teachers and educators have an important role in choosing the fables.