Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

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Introduction: Fantasy for British Children today 
Anyone who has read a challenging work of fantasy before and submerged into its 
world(s) is bound to retain something of its charm, special qualities and the emotions it 
evoked. Usually, this kind of literature is first encountered in our early childhood, when we 
come across fairy tales and other stories involving magic. Not without reason are children 
known for their curiosity and vivid imagination; and with the help of these books they can 
playfully test game against reality. At first, anything seems possible to the small child because 
it has not yet learned to distinguish between fiction and the real world. With increasing 
experience, however, the child begins to differentiate between things possible and impossible 
until it fully separates the two worlds. Compared to adults, children are generally said to be 
more spontaneous as far as their willingness to believe is concerned. This is mainly due to 
young persons’ relative impartiality and openness towards new things and the much shorter 
temporal distance to realms of unlimited possibilities. Small wonder that books with fantastic 
elements belong to the favourite reading matter of children. As these books, discovered and 
cherished in our childhood, have made deep impressions on us, as adults we assign them a 
special status often retained for later life. Who cannot name their favourites as a child, and 
who does not enjoy returning to them?
The fluctuation of readerly esteem of fantasy is mirrored in children’s literature, albeit 
with smaller amplitude. Here too, fantasy undergoes cyclical stages between minimum and 
maximum public attention and reception, yet it does not slip into a subliminal status. At the 
end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century the genre’s sinusoidal 
oscillations have reached another climax. Not only does the present boom of fantasy 
encompass already established classics, but above all an unprecedented number of new, high-
quality publications bound to influence coming generations of children and parents. Never 
before was fantasy for British children more topical or varied than today, with thousands of 
publications each year contributing to the continuous development of a vast literary and 
increasingly popular public landscape. This enormous increase of fantasy’s popularity is 
accompanied by a simultaneous distinct change in the composition of its readership.