starlady: Queen Susan of Narnia, called the Gentle and the Queen of Spring (gentle queen how now)
Electra ([personal profile] starlady) wrote 2011-01-25 07:31 pm (UTC)

I can confidently predict that you would like certain aspects of Young Wizards very much. Simple they are not, and they're often dazzlingly sublime.

I don't think oversimplifying does anyone a service.

In principle I agree with this, unquestionably, but in practice I find myself emotionally attached to a lot of children's fantasy even though it does tend to oversimplify, I think. Jacques is particularly egregious, but so are Lewis and Tolkien in only slightly different ways. In general I think more recent children's fantasy is much better at this, but I think this is also part and parcel of ideas about childhood changing over the past century or so, and I wonder about going too far, but then I doubt my own doubt.

The real problem I have with so much of children's fantasy is the gratuitous cruelty of the endings.

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