ABSTRACT
Fantasy stories, or at least stories containing fantasy elements, comprise a very large and important group within the body of children’s literature. It is a group which takes in traditional tales, time-slips, anthropomorphic animal stories and science fiction, all of which are covered in earlier chapters, and takes in too the novel-length books considered here. ‘Fantasy’ is often contrasted with ‘realism’. ‘Realism’ – many say – is to do with what has happened, or at least could happen without the events coming into conflict with the laws of nature. ‘Fantasy’ authors and illustrators in contrast are free to disobey these laws and can give their imagination full reign. Fantasy stories can take us into alternative worlds, bring magic into this world and introduce extraordinary beings. I’m sticking to this quite crude but reasonably useful distinction, while accepting that all fiction involves the workings of the imagination and that in some stories boundaries between fantasy and reality may be blurred.
