Novel Story - New masks for the Mentor

Heroes usually need all the help they can get. As they begin their journey, they lack the knowledge and skills they need to survive. This is the archetype of the mentoring comes in.
Teaching the hero they need to know, is the mentor's role in history. Mentors have the knowledge and experience that the hero must pass through the experience they have on. The mentor is the way to see the heroes of the world and brings them to see things from a new switch and useful.
Traditionally, mentors are often portrayed as a wizened old witch, as Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, or the fairy godmother in the Cinderella story. Joseph Campbell - Hero with a thousand faces in his book - said that mentoring is often depicted as an old man or old woman who helps the hero, the task they are about to face. They often offer a tool to help the hero later.
However, a mentor, not old, experienced, or even people. The following list contains some suggestions for new ways to use the archetype mentor in your stories.
The child
Children see the world differently than adults. They often have an innocence and playful nature makes them much more able to cope with stress. Often adults forget how to do that. One child, unrestrained by years of rules and rigid thinking can, right to the heart of the problem and see solutions in which an adult can only see problems. With a child as a mentor, glued and stressed the character could learn to enjoy life and be more flexible.
An animal
Shamanic traditions often teach that animals can give people the knowledge they need. get through the examination of animals and their behavior, learn a hero to many things to help him through his ordeal. A lion could teach the hero on the hunt and bravery, while the deer can learn about stealth and smooth. Animals do not even need to literally animals, the hero could sequences, where they communicate with the animal spirit and get their knowledge from there dream. There are many books explaining the importance of animals that you use to find ideas.
Book
Writing things for posterity is a wonderful way to preserve knowledge. It is possible that the book could role of mentor to fill the character. The kind of book that as a mentor depend strongly on the history, which can write, act. It could be a manual that teaches him that he sit for the tests, or it can be a dusty book forced the hand of a dead pirate on the location of hidden treasure must. The hero can learn by reading cover to cover, or they can use to open the book at random and bibliomancy one side and get the information they need for the next lesson.
Imaginary friend
Everyone has heard that little voice in your head occasionally to warn them to do something, or reminds them of something important at the right time. If you expand this concept, there is no reason for a mentor, a character could not just an imaginary projection of their own subconscious and the things they already know. Chuck Palahniuk, this concept in his novel "Fight Club, Tyler Durden, which are presented not in the reality of the unconscious part of the main character. A mentor must be so destructive, however, and perhaps also a manifestation of the nature of consciousness.
The movie characters
Inspiration can often from the strangest places. There is no reason why your character is not played by mentor characters in movies. If you fight your hero to find an answer, a line from a famous film give them inspiration and could understand that they need to get the rest of their adventures. One might even go so far as the character in the films with the same actors in different roles, which somehow always manages to give the hero of the right information they need to be executed at the right time.
unusual way of using the figure of the mentor can be your memorable stories for the reader, because you are using the same archetypes in new ways. With an unconventional teacher can your readers that not all knowledge is taught in school, and show that you sometimes need to approach problems from a new angle. Basically, this is what mentoring is all about anyway.