What’s So Great About Magic?
And why is it all over children’s literature…and oozing into some adult lit, too?
I’d agree with you if you said that the word “magic” is overused almost to the point of meaninglessness.
But don’t become jaded to magic.
It’s anything but meaningless.
In children’s literature, magic spins a golden thread.
You’ll find it in the dragons and impossible creatures of fantasy.
It’s in the ghost stories read around a campfire.
It’s the wizards, sorcery, and darkness of books like Harry Potter.
It’s also in stories where you might not expect it—stories about a normal town with characters who seem normal until something happens and a child has to become a hero.
Heroes are magical.
They transform a bad situation into a good one.
Magic is transformative.
It’s imagination gone wild, and there’s a sense of freedom to that.
It opens the reader’s mind to possibility.
Magic is possibility.
I want a child who reads one of my stories to get the sense that anything is possible.
Animals talking to one another?
Of course, why not?
A twelve-year-old using baking magic to bring her father back from the depths of grief?
Charming.
A boy learning that life isn’t black or white, but, instead, is various and glorious shades of gray.
Magic.
Magic shows up differently in every life, whether fictional or real.
It’s a dream of a loved one pointing you in a direction.
It’s asking for something and receiving it when you’ve lost hope.
It’s unexpected kindness.
It’s living things, stars, medicine, the magic of nines.
It’s nebulousness, coincidence and serendipity.
A perfect moment.
It’s language and poetry and metaphors and similes.
Children’s books remind readers to be aware of all the magic that already exists in their lives.
There’s magic in everything.
If we look for it.
And why wouldn’t we?
Children will grow up soon enough and begin pulling back the curtain on magic.
Until then, books let children hold onto the beauty of magic, the subtlety of it, the possibility that magic can bring.
It can help children through a rough time.
It can also help them–and you–live a charmed life.
And who doesn’t want that?
Share this message with a friend who needs to see the magic in life.
Until next time,
~ Gail
Countdown: 48 weeks left of 2024. How are those goals coming along?
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