A Short Review of Magical Tales: Myth, Legend, & Enchantment in Children's Books, edited by Carolyne Larrington and Diane Purkiss

Magical Tales: Myth, Legend, and Enchantment in Children's Books by Diane Purkiss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Magical Tales is a book for the scholar of children's literature of fantastic, especially if one is interested in exploring its roots in myth and legend and in medieval literature. But, given that this book accompanied an exhibit of manuscripts and drawings of Tolkien, Lewis, and Pullman at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, it is also accessible to the museum-goer who may or may not be a scholar. However, given the references to so many works of children's fantasy, the editors, Diane Purkiss and Carolyne Larrington, and the authors of the individual chapters, are assuming these museum-goers are well read and fans of the fantastic, if not scholars.

I enjoyed it very much. The topics range from a discussion of books of magic (and books as magic), to a discussion of the influence of Northern or Norse mythology, the magical Middle Ages, once and future Arthurs, to early movable books for children.

Would I have enjoyed it as much if I had not read so many of the children's fantasies examined and referenced? Probably not, but this is not meant to be an introduction to such literature for those who haven't read it. There are other books for that purpose--or rather, go to the sources, the books themselves, and the myths and the legends, of the Norse gods, of Merlin and Arthur. True, this is an introduction, a survey as it were, but the Notes at the end, and the texts referenced and discussed give the interested reader direction as what to read next, or where to begin reading.

Books are indeed magical. These fantasies are, as "Lytton would have it, [be] 'Beloved as Fable' yet also in some important symbolic ways, 'believed as Truth' "(151).

Recommended.



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