Have you ever heard someone say, “You’re living in a fantasy world?” to which I would say, “So, what’s wrong with that?”
Fantasy is a creation of the imagination. I wrote about the importance of the imagination last month. Imaginative fiction featuring strange settings and unusual characters is so important for a child’s development.
The advantages of reading fantasy come from the way it encourages children to think outside the box. It allows them to escape to another world and then to explore the feelings and ideas of characters within that world. Fantasy can also offer ways to solve problems in the fantasy world that may translate to the real world.
One of the best benefits of fantasy is that it allows readers to experiment with different ways of seeing the world. It invites children to make connections between this fictional world and their own reality.
Fantasy can also use humor to lighten a heavy subject. How many times have you read a fantasy story or seen an animated movie where the goofy, silly, or seemingly not so bright character, comes up with the solution?
The highest grossing books and movies over the last twenty years have been in the genre of fantasy. That must tell you something.
So, let’s encourage our children to read fantasy stories and also read these types of stories ourselves.