Quote: C.S. Lewis

In a sense a child does not long for fairy land as a boy longs to be the hero of the first eleven. Does anyone suppose that he really and prosaically longs for all the dangers and discomforts of a fairy tale?—really wants dragons in contemporary England? It is not so. It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. This is a special kind of longing.

I read The Chronicles of Narnia not long ago, and the compilation I was reading included at the end an essay by Lewis about his philosophy of writing for children, from which this is excerpted. I do not agree with him on everything, and do not unequivocally love his work, but reading through his thoughts on this makes it impossible for me not to respect him immensely. The idea stated above is absolutely wonderful, and of course lyrically stated; I think all of the critics and writers who either feel children’s fantasy is harmful or feel it should be done condescendingly would do well to take a page from the curious fellow.