Interestingly enough. Do you find that parents have a hard time connecting with adolescent’s and children’s love of fantasy? Do you find that…
You know, sometimes.
…because it seems to be—I will go ahead and mention those two words: Harry Potter. He again opened the door to a whole generation of readers. And from there on, and there’s been readers all along, but he captured worldwide attention, and parents are reading it with their kids. When you talk with adults about how to share the world of fantasy with children, what advice to do you give?
Well there are a couple things I say. First off, there are plenty of adults, like myself, who love it as well. And I mentioned fantasy isn’t just a kid’s thing. But something about kids, they are willing to look at something not as a genre but as its story. You will notice that children’s literature isn’t shelved by what type of genre it is. The fantasy books are next door to the books about the Great Depression. And the kids will just read it if it is a good book no matter what. Now there are a lot of us who really get into the fantasy, and I have had parents come to me sometimes at my book signings and say, “My children only read this fantasy stuff. I’m fine with a little bit of it, but can’t I get them to read some classics?” And I always tell them, “Don’t worry, if they love reading… What you want from them when they are that age is to love reading, whatever it is they are reading. And if they truly fall in love with it, they will get into the classics. They will read broadly once they get a little bit older.” It happened with me. I got into fantasy. I didn’t want to touch anything that wasn’t fantasy for a long time. Until I got to college and then I started to get into Jane Austen, and I started to get into Milton, and I started to get into some of these other things. I still love fantasy, but I had been taught by my reading experience to just love a good story and good literature. I have every confidence that if someone learns to love reading, they will end up reading all sorts of different things. One genre won’t be able to satisfy them.
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