The opus of Anto Gardaš, who wrote for children and adults, contains fourteen novels for children and adolescents. The novels were written and published during a period of thirty years. Hence this thesis observed transformations occuring in the author's novelistic production under the influence of developments in children's and adult literature, but it also revealed constant elements of his poetics that are detectable throughout his entire opus. The thesis consists of two parts. The first part observes the novels of Anto Gradaš with respect to the modernity of the narrative procedures thus assigning each novel to the group of traditional, modern or postmodern novels respectively. The author's first novels written in the 70's and 80's of the twentieth century are traditional children's novels, while the novels created from the 90's on can be determined as traditional, modern and postmodern. This classification leads to the conclusion that in his authorial work Gardaš kept pace with the alterations that took place in children's but also adult literature. Some key elements remained a constant throughout his entire novelistic production – the sense of belonging and appreciation of the Slavonian homeland presented in historical, ecological and travelling motifs related through an interesting plot, the depiction of the nuclear, patriarchal family with prominent gender stereotypes and the cultivation of family values. The author introduces some novelties with respect to genre, which can be seen in genre hybridization and genre crossing, as well as changes in the basic principles of genres. Furthermore Gardaš systemized the science-fiction genre in Croatian children’s literature. The second part of the thesis depicts in charts the modernity of the narrative procedures in the novels of Gardaš and the reception of his novels by elementary school students in higher grades. The results of the study show that the students are familiar with Gardaš as a traditional author, while his modern and postmodern novels are predominantly unknown among students.