Back in the 1980s when I first began to write for children I was told by the agents and publishers in the UK that children didn’t read about magic anymore, that I needed to add more realism to my work. I didn’t believe them and thought this was the Pollingers teaching (they were agents) and continued writing what I wanted to read. After Rowling everyone changed their tune and everyone started writing for children. One of the reasons she became so famous was because adults read her books – adults who through their childhoods had been starved of myth and magic.
It is impossible to take magic out of the imagination of the human race – all religion is imagination, every country an effect of imagination creating borders, all finance is just imagining value. You cannot deny children a realm of the fabulous and the impossible. It is what will sustain their adult lives.
#rowling
#fantasybooks