This paper explores the cognitive -semantic properties of the concept of “childhood” in literary discourse. The study aims to identify how “childhood” is conceptualized in fiction, to describe its core and peripheral semantic zones, and to clarify its evaluative and metaphorical components. The dataset includes selected excerpts from Uzbek, Russian, and English literary texts where childhood is represented through recurring lexical cues, narrative situations, and associative imagery. Methodologically, the research draws on cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics and applies cognitive- semantic and contextual analysis alongside conceptual modeling. The findings indicate that the core layer is dominated by meanings of innocence, play, memory, and nostalgia, while the near periphery foregrounds family environment, socialization, and moral formation. The far periphery is associated with trauma, loss, and identity -related experiences that reshape the overall conceptual structure. The paper concludes that “childhood” functions as a culturally and authorially mediated concept that bui lds a multi -layered semantic space and is articulated through metaphors, symbols, and discourse -specific evaluative strategies. Childhood concept, cognitive semantics, literary text, conceptual analysis, imagery, core and peripheral semantic analysis, memory, longing, trauma, nostalgia.