In about ten minutes she reached it and found it was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it, wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what to do next, she heard a pitter patter of feet coming toward her. And as soon after that a very strange person stepped out from among the trees into the light of the lamp-post.

He was only a little taller than Lucy herself and he carried over his hand an umbrella, white with snow. From the waist upward he was like a man, but his legs were shaped like a goat's (the hair on them was glossy black) and instead of feet had goat's hoofs. He also had a tail, but Lucy did not notice this at first because it was neatly caught up over the arm that held the umbrella so as to keep it from trailing in the snow. He had red woollen muffler round his neck and his skin was rather reddish too. He had a strange, but pleasant little face, with a short pointed beard and curly hair, and out of the hair there stuck two horns, one on each side of his forehead.
…

"Goodness gracious me!" exclaimed the Faun. (Chapter 1)

Lucy, one of the protagonists of the tale, climbs into a wardrobe only to find that it leads into an amazing forest. The Faun is the first (and definitely not the last) strange character she encounters in the forest.

Spoiler alert: in real life, it's unlikely that we'll open a wardrobe only to find a magical forest and a half-man, half-goat waiting for us. But this is children's literature, and that means anything's possible. The fantastic appearance of the Faun in this passage is a perfect example of the way in which extraordinary things happen all the time in kids' lit.

The wardrobe itself is a great metaphor for the way in which children's literature moves between the real and the magical. On one side of the wardrobe, Lucy's in the real world: the world of regular people and houses and streets. But once she's in the wardrobe, she's in a whole new world: one in which the rules of reality are constantly being bent.

Children's literature is often full of vivid, detailed description. It's a way to help kids better imagine what they're reading about, and this passage highlights that like whoa.

The narrator describes the faun: "From the waist upward he was like a man, but his legs were shaped like a goat's (the hair on them was glossy black) and instead of feet [he] had goat's hoofs." The Faun holds an umbrella, wears a "red woolen muffler," and had a "pointed beard and curly hair." All of these details give us a very clear picture of this otherwise fantastic creature.