The subject of my considerations is the position and role of an intellectually disabled character in literature for children and youth. By presenting selected works of two generations of German authors in Das war der Hirbel by Peter Härtling and the series Rico, Oskar and… by Andreas Steinhöfel I try to answer the following two questions: whether the writer, burdening his character with all kinds of dysfunctions associated with intellectual disability, should present all aspects of the disability and illustrate it in a realistic manner, describing the accompanying physical limitations and physiological arduousness, or rather to idealize it and present in the form of a metaphor so as not to alienate and scare the small recipient and whether the character who, due to their limitations differs from the common perceptions about the protagonist in a book for children, has a chance to become the hero of the young reader or will his presence in this type of literature condemn the book to failure.