Fantasy and the Real World in British Children's Literature

This book examines the children’s fantasies of three extraordinary British writers - J.K. Rowling, Diana Wynne Jones, and Terry Pratchett - and investigates their use of narrative strategies to engage children in reading and educate them into becoming more mature readers and indeed individuals. The author argues that these writers do not deploy fantasy either as mere escapism or as a mask for didactic moralising, but instead demonstrate the ethical power of fantasy and the imagination itself in real-world interaction. She demonstrates how, in very different ways, they introduce readers to the unpleasantness of the real world and equip them with the strategies with which to survive it.