ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the particularly strong appeal which exists between children and animal fantasy characters. Beginning with a section on Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, it traces the character’s development from carnivalesque anti-hero in The Karnival Kid to the lovable friend of small children in Mickey Mouse’s Club House. Going on to consider fantasy animals whose role is moral instruction, such as Aslan in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or trickster figures such as Bugs Bunny, Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear in North American culture, the educative aspect of animal fantasy is also evaluated. Following a discussion of fantasy bears such as Winnie-the-Pooh and Paddington, two sub-strands of animal fantasy are developed. The first, ‘Hedgerow Fantasy’, explores fantasy animals in their natural habitat, undisturbed by human interference, and focuses on a comparison of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. The second, ‘Farmyard and Field Fantasy’, explores animals under direct threat from humans and encourages an enhanced environmentalist awareness in its child readers and viewers. This section explores E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Chris Noonan’s film Babe and Richard Adams’s Watership Down.
