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A child’s imagination is a wonderful gift, isn’t it? I still remember the rush of excitement I felt while reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time while huddled in the back seat of the car. Sure, I was physically sitting in the driveway of my uncle’s house in West Texas on a hot summer day but mentally I was at the Pelennor Fields with a hobbit and the Shieldmaiden of Rohan fulfilling an ancient prophecy. No one observing from the outside could tell that my mind and soul was being formed in those moments; I learned lessons of bravery, honor, love, strength, and hope that I would carry into my adult life.
Fiction for children is important, essential even. In times when hearts may grow weary of doing good or when the mirror that we look through is dirtied and dim, fiction can re-enchant our hearts, minds, and souls. As G.K. Chesterton has said,
“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
As Christians and caregivers, we should give children the gift of having their imaginations formed with stories of how the dragon is defeated.
