When I think about my favorite types of books to read, I have to admit that ones falling into the fantasy category are not the ones that immediately come to mind.
While reading Diana Mitchell’s book, Children’s Literature: An invitation to the world, I came across some really interesting information about fantasy books:
By providing literature that stretches the imagination, we can perhaps help children retain their curiosity, keeping their minds flexible so that they’ll be willing to stretch out and grab concepts that seem just out of reach.
Imagination is the key ingredient to this genre. By appealing to our imagination, fantasy can help …
- fuel hope
- deal with questions about the universe
- empower us to become what we wish to be
- learn about and understand people
- live vicariously and have special experiences
- reveal truths about life
- make life more interesting
By freeing the imagination. fantasy can help children face reality with more creativity and spontaneity of thought. Stimulating and unleashing the imagination is an important part of children’s education, and the use of fantasy can engage them in the very serious work of releasing the imagination.
Big Universe Learning has a Fairy Tales & Fantasy category containing over 100 books. That is a lot of potential to encourage imaginative thinking …
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Roxaboxen, a hill in Yuma, Arizona, littered with rocks and wooden boxes, serves as the setting of this children’s book, which tells a true tale of one child’s active imagination. “With the aid of her mother’s childhood manuscript, the memories of relatives, and letters and maps from former inhabitants of Roxaboxen, author Alice McLerran recreated the magical world…,” in this storybook, “…as if she played there herself.” McLerran.
I’ll always remember the day my son returned home from third grade, after his teacher read Roxaboxen, by Alice McLerran, to her classroom of children. He couldn’t stop talking about the imaginary town, created simply from rocks, broken pottery, colored glass, and old wooden boxes. There were: buried treasures, a Main Street, houses, and dishes, a town hall, a Mayor, plenty of shops, money, a bakery, ice cream parlors, cars, a jail, police, horses, and a cemetery. Not only does Roxaboxen allow children to feel like they can participate in making a grown-up place all their own, students might just venture to create a town, which they can run – in the classroom, at a park, in the basement, or in the backyard.
Roxaboxen serves as a favorite childhood book in our home, as our son is now 12, and he continues to create imaginary towns, tree houses, recyclable villages, European cities, all of which found their roots in the works of Alice McLerran. Roxaboxen is “A celebration of the ability children have to create, even with the most uncompromising materials, a world of fantasy so real and multidimensional that it earns a lasting place in memory.” McLerran.
