Now, to be fair, I had a nigh-invincible ability to read magic into many books that didn't actually have any (Exhibit A: The Secret Garden)
How very dare.
-- but I don't think I would have been able or inclined to do that if The Egypt Game had actually been one of the types of books that force-fed you a banality pill.
I think there's a difference between stories about imagination and stories where imagination is punished. The Egypt Game begins in the understanding of a game, shifts ambiguously so that the children worry that they have accidentally tapped into something magical, and is upheld at the end as realistic, but in a way where even if the game itself is over, the value of imagination is affirmed—it's even healing. No one has their illusions smashed to show that the world is inescapable. If anything, imagination draws people to interact more with the world.
no subject
How very dare.
-- but I don't think I would have been able or inclined to do that if The Egypt Game had actually been one of the types of books that force-fed you a banality pill.
I think there's a difference between stories about imagination and stories where imagination is punished. The Egypt Game begins in the understanding of a game, shifts ambiguously so that the children worry that they have accidentally tapped into something magical, and is upheld at the end as realistic, but in a way where even if the game itself is over, the value of imagination is affirmed—it's even healing. No one has their illusions smashed to show that the world is inescapable. If anything, imagination draws people to interact more with the world.