Children's Fantasy Literature: An Introduction by Michael Levy and Farah Mendlesohn (review)

The purpose of Children's Fantasy Literature: An Introduction, according to the authors in their opening statement, "is to bring together two traditions of criticism, that of the literature of the fantastic, and that of children's literature" (1). Two corollary aims are "to situate children's fantasy in the context of changing ideas of childhood across three centuries, and perhaps most crucially, to consider the effect which the extension of childhood has had upon the writing and publishing of children's fiction" (1). The authors are no strangers to either subject: Michael Levy has published on Natalie Babbitt, David Almond, Lois Lowry, fairy tales, and science fiction for children and young adults, among other subjects, while Farah Mendlesohn has several books and numerous articles on fantasy and science fiction to her name, including Rhetorics of Fantasy and, with Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy and The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. Both have long-term associations with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and, for Levy especially, until his death in 2017, the Children's Literature Association.

In drawing the parameters of their exploration, Levy and Mendlesohn declare that their pool of texts is literature for children produced over the past three hundred years in the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, and the United States, including European fantasy only when it was a key part of Anglo-American childhood reading. They exclude science fiction, alternative history, non-magical alternative worlds, and animal tales that attempt to recreate realistic animal life; but they include "fantasy" in a variety of forms, including myths, legends, and fairy tales, though only in broad terms, as well as nonsense tales, paranormal romances, quest fantasies, and other works easily identifiable as "fantasy." Levy and Mendlesohn consider only print media, and specifically, books aimed at a school-aged audience; thus, film and television, picture books, and poetry are all also excluded. The geopolitical demarcations of United Kingdom, Commonwealth, and United States are a deliberate point on the part of the authors, who argue that up until the 1980s and '90s, Anglo-American children's literature was divided into two distinct and fairly separate book markets: the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth on one hand, and the United States (eventually joining with Canada) on the other, and authors quite familiar to one set of readers (American or British) were not necessarily so for the other set for most of the time period this survey covers (6). Furthermore, a deliberate effort is made where appropriate to consider children's fantasy produced in or consumed by the colonies as distinct from that produced in or consumed by British or American readers.

The first five chapters are broad in scope, providing a general overview of the first two hundred-plus years of children's fantasy, proceeding somewhat chronologically. Chapter 1, "How Fantasy Became Children's Literature," begins the historical examination by noting the oral roots of Western fantasy: fables, both Aesop's and the medieval beast fables such as those about Reynard the Fox; early folk legends such as Robin Hood; and, of course, the oral and early print traditions of folktales, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes. The purpose of this chapter is to show how, despite the emphasis on realism that so characterized eighteenth-century English literature for both children and adults, a fantasy element has always been present in the genre. Chapter 2 continues this history into the nineteenth century and Victorian and Edwardian fantasy, with brief discussions of how George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Jean Ingelow, and others borrowed the fairy tale structure to create original fantasies that are freed from the strict moral realism of the previous century; this chapter also provides brief looks at other children's fantasies of the period, including the nonsense literature of Lear and Carroll. The chapter culminates with Levy and Mendlesohn arguing that the shifts in children's fantasy that occur in this century reflect a shift in the concept...