When did we stop caring that elves aren't real?

[rachelmanija]

Starting around the 1950s, a number of books in English for children had the message that magic isn't real. Helpfully for the historical cause, many of them won Newbery Medals or Honor, so they are very easy to come across.

The basic plot is that Protagonist Kid meets a kid (Tragic Kid) who claims that magic (elves, etc) is real. The kids do magic spells, make elf homes, etc. Protagonist Kid usually isn't sure that the magic is real, but wants to believe that it is. At the end it is revealed that magic is definitely not real, there are no elves, and Tragic Kid was making it all up to cover up for the fact that their father is abusive/their mother is an addict/they have no parents and are living alone/etc. Protagonist Kid is sadder but wiser.

There are variants on this, such as Bridge to Terabithia, in which no one ever believes that the magic is real - it's explicitly a game - but it ends in tragedy anyway.

I recently came across an example of this, published in 1996, and realized that it is the most recent example I can recall of the genre. Am I missing examples of it, or did they stop getting written or published?

The thing that has always struck me most about this genre is that it's a solution in search of a problem. Kids believing in magic and elves and so forth is not actually a big social problem, but the books treat it as if is. They are written as if the belief must be broken with a devastating shock, when in reality, most kids gradually learn that their parents are Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, without the need for a dramatic revelation.

Those are also beliefs which are over way before kids are old enough to read the "there's no such thing as magic" books. The books aren't teaching kids there's no such thing as magic, because by the time they're old enough to read them they already know that. They're actually teaching them that if they read a book hoping that it's fantasy, it may in fact be a book about how fantasy isn't real.

Anyway, the genre thankfully seems to have died the death. But that made me wonder about some things. Why was this ever considered worthwhile to begin with? Why is it always fantasy book-style magic that needs to be dispelled, rather than the sort of supernatural things that people really do believe in as adults, like crystal healing and possession by demons and magical-type conspiracy theories?

Comments

[ethelmay]

The Changeling (also Zilpha Keatley Snyder) has similar imaginative play, but I wouldn't say either that or The Egypt Game is down on magic. Snyder subsequently (as far as publishing order goes, anyway - not sure of the chronology of the writing) turned the girls' invented world from The Changeling into a fantasy trilogy. (I'm sure a lot of people here already know that.)

[swan_tower]

Yeah, for The Egypt Game . . . my records tell me I re-read it back in 2012, so not recently enough for the plot to stick clearly in my memory, but I know I quite enjoyed it at the time. I was also somewhat surprised to learn it wasn't a fantasy novel, because that was how I remembered it! 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) -- 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.

. . . huh. My own choice of words there just made a connection in my brain: I now strongly suspect that the people who wrote Changeling: The Dreaming got exposed to way too many examples of this type of book growing up. They would have been the right age for it (firmly Gen X), and given that the entire game is built around the idea of magic and wonder struggling to survive in a world determined to deny its very existence, it ain't hard to see a connection.

[sovay]

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.

[swan_tower]

Thank you! That has given words to the sense in my head that was too nebulous for me to try and articulate it -- basically that no, there isn't real magic, but the game itself was good, not a foolish and doomed attempt to hide from a cruel, uncaring world. :-P

[sovay]

Thank you!

You're welcome!

That has given words to the sense in my head that was too nebulous for me to try and articulate it -- basically that no, there isn't real magic, but the game itself was good, not a foolish and doomed attempt to hide from a cruel, uncaring world.

Okay, I should obviously have saved my link to Le Guin and Tolkien for this reply.

[legionseagle]

I'm never quite sure how far Burnett actually goes into whether the Magic is real or not; obviously a lot of it is self-belief, but the distance communication between Archie Craven and his dead wife is presented as a thing, and the way something very similar happens in Robin actually is magic in a sort of theosophy/Rosicrucian sort of way.

[sovay]

obviously a lot of it is self-belief, but the distance communication between Archie Craven and his dead wife is presented as a thing, and the way something very similar happens in Robin actually is magic in a sort of theosophy/Rosicrucian sort of way.

I seem to have interpreted that the Magic is real, if not necessarily in the ways that the children believe and work their spells—I didn't know from either the numinous or headology the first time I read it, but it's not just Archibald Craven's dream of Lilias calling to him from the garden that can't be explained prosaically, it's the way that far off in Italy he comes back to life with his Yorkshire bit of earth like a fisher king who doesn't know it. I have opinions now as an adult reader about how much you can banish chronic illness by tending roses instead of thistles, but.

Robin is the Burnett I've read that isn't either The Secret Garden or A Little Princess! My mother and I discovered it in a one-room used book store in the basement of the Somerville Armory and bought it on the spot because neither of us had ever heard of it.

[legionseagle]

You mean there's someone else to whom I can enthuse about her neglected masterpiece T.Tembarom !?!

[sovay]

You mean there's someone else to whom I can enthuse about her neglected masterpiece T.Tembarom !?!

I remember your review! I just still haven't read the book!

[queenbookwench]

I should have read farther down the thread for Snyder discussion ;). I adored the Green-Sky trilogy as a tween and still do, and I find it fascinating from a writerly point of view that it started as a pretend-fantasy world in The Changeling, and then she decided to write an actual fantasy series. Also, the dichotomy of endings between the last book and the video game (which I never knew existed and only learned about because of Yuletide) is _also_ kind of fascinating.

[asakiyume]

I loved the Green-Sky trilogy too: I read it first, and then discovered The Changeling and thought heeeyyyyy! I see what happened here! It was my first time, as a young person, to have insight into an author's creative process.

[sovay]

Snyder subsequently (as far as publishing order goes, anyway - not sure of the chronology of the writing) turned the girls' invented world from The Changeling into a fantasy trilogy.

I'm glad it worked better than Dorothy Gilman with The Maze at the Heart of the Castle.