Fantasy

Some people believe that fantasy is dangerous for children to read, and some people have a completely different opinion.
According to Ursula Le Guin, fantasy is not just for children, but for adults too, “Tales of talking animals and fantastical adventure aren’t just for children, argues Ursula Le Guin – we can and should return to them throughout our lives” (Quote page 1 line 1-3).
Right from the beginning you know that ULG is a fan of fantasy being a part of everyone’s lives.
You can always use your child or grandchild as an excuse to read fantasy, if you don’t have the courage to do it by yourself.
Fantasy has always been perceived as being for children only, and fantasy has been conflated with immaturity, which according to ULG is a rather sizeable error.
Many of the texts are poetry and it contains different elements from different genres.
Many fantasies which actually were published as for children, is often read by adults, “It begins with, say, George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind and runs on through Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, The Wind in the Willows, the Just So Stories and The Jungle Book, the Pooh books, Dr Dolittle, The Hobbit, The Once and Future King, Charlotte’s Web, to my first three Earthsea books and all the serious imaginative fiction that continues to be published “for children” but is often read by adults” (Quote page 2 line 48-52).
Realistic fiction does not affect everyone, but only people in a specific age group depending on the theme. Fiction genres as horror, mystery, romance and science fiction are only being read by adults and teenagers, so it seems like the only fiction genre that can be read in all ages, is fantasy. All the different kinds of fantasies make it easier to reach a much bigger age group.
ULG thinks that the reason why many adults don’t read fantasy is that they don’t have the courage to do it, “Discouraged by critical prejudice, rigid segregation of books by age and genre, and unconscious maturismo, many people literally hadn’t read any imaginative literature since childhood” (Quote page 4 line 98-100).
She sets out the issue and her personal opinion of this issue. She gives us some examples for and against the issue, and writes about the development of the issue and statements through the ages. In the end she makes her statement clear once again.

The question is, whether fantasy is dangerous for children or not.
Some children get so affected by fantasy like the Harry Potter books that they think it is real or start acting like the characters they read about. That is one of the reasons why a school has banned Harry Potter books from their school library. Some parents thought that it was a good idea, maybe because it was their own children who were affected by the books, or maybe someone they knew. But other parents started protesting, probably on a point of principle.
In a clip from Fox News a priest says that the parents should not make such a big deal out of it, they can just take out the books from another library. As a school you have to take care of all children, and if there is two children who get affected by these books, you have to remove them. He uses an example where two children is deathly allergic to peanuts, then you don’t go put peanut butter in the cafeteria, no matter how low the number of allergic children is.
Many people may think that it is stupid and unnecessary to remove the books, because Harry Potter might be the only book that can make their children read. It is also hard to identify with it, when your own child isn’t affected by the books in any ways, but good.
The fact that the books can make children see fiction as the real world might be dangerous, but I wouldn’t say that it was enough to remove these book from the market, because it is such a low number of children, who are affected by them, and it is up to the parents to keep an eye of their children, and make sure they see it as fiction, and not reality.
According to ULG in “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons”, parents should trust their children, “Normal children do not confuse reality and fantasy – they confuse them much less often than we adults do” (Quote page 18).
Carol Rookwood banned the Harry Potter books from the school library because a parent thought they had a “serious tone of death, hate and sheer evil”. Harry Potter and his friends is characterized as immoral, they are “capable of lying, cheating and stealing, are anti-authoritarian and encourage breaking the rules on the grounds of being ‘special’” (Quote by Rev Dr Mark Stibble). No parents want their children to lie, cheat or steel, and if that is the affection of reading these books for some children, it isn’t that strange, that some people want them gone.
Both parts have their own reasons to either want the books near their children or not.

We have a lot of arguments for and against fantasy, and it will properly stay that way. People will not just stop loving fantasy, if it has always been a part of their lives, but critics will also continue to exist in the future. This issue will properly continue to exist, and maybe we will never find a full solution. In the end it is up to the parents to decide whether fantasy should be a part of their children’s lives or not.

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[ 1 ]. Abbreviation of Ursula Le Guin
[ 2 ]. ”Imaginary friends” page 2 line 32
[ 3 ]. ”Imaginary friends” page 3 line 61-64
[ 4 ]. Clip from Fox News: http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=7KZLLNNX
[ 5 ]. ”Worlds of fanatsy” page 18 F
[ 6 ]. A primary school headmistress from Kent
[ 7 ]. ”Worlds of fantasy” page 17 B