Читать книгу Writing Children's Books For Dummies - Peter Economy - Страница 52

Fantasy relies on the notion that real people in real settings can encounter magical things and can often perform magic. In other words, some people have special powers, whereas others don’t. Fantasy can also involve mythical creatures such as fairies and unicorns, as well as talking animals that may or may not interact with humans. Subgenres of fantasy include urban fantasy, epic fantasy, historical fantasy, paranormal romance, the supernatural, fairy tale retellings, magical realism, high fantasy, sword-and-sorcery tales, and visionary fantasy.

Fantasy is written for children of all ages from, say, three years of age and up, so the formats that work best for it include picture books (see Figure 3-1), early readers, first chapter books, middle-grade books, and young adult books, graphic novels — basically all the formats!

Cover only from The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry & the Big Hungry Bear by Audrey Wood. Illustrated by Don Wood. Copyright © 2020 by Audrey Wood and Don Wood. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

FIGURE 3-1: The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry & the Big Hungry Bear, a classic tale in picture book format.

Great examples of classic contemporary children’s fantasy include Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda (Puffin Books), J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (Scholastic Press), Eva Evergreen by Julie Abe (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), and Curse of the Night Witch by Alex Aster (Sourcebooks Young Readers).

For recently published fantasy examples targeted at young adults, check out Where Dreams Descend, by Janella Angeles (Wednesday Books) and the anthology A Phoenix First Must Burn, by Patrice Caldwell (Penguin Books).

Fantasy shares many elements with the rich array of fairy tales, fables, folktales, myths, and legends from all cultures. They come from old traditions of storytelling that you can trace to particular countries or regions. A few of the originating sources that writers mine again and again include the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, Aesop, Russian folk tales, and Greek mythology.

In fact, nearly every culture has a storytelling tradition that you can research for material. These stories continually inspire writers to write retellings and adaptations, stories that add to or change the source material in some unique way. Here are some excellent examples of retellings: Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine (Quill Tree Books), a Cinderella retelling; Beastly, by Alex Flinn (HarperTeen), a “Beauty and the Beast” adaptation; and Bound by Donna Jo Napoli (Atheneum Books for Young Readers), a Cinderella tale set in ancient China.

You can also combine fantasy and science fiction (discussed in the preceding section). Middle-grade and young adult readers especially love reading these combos. For example, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (Laurel Leaf Library) has technological aspects to the plot, as well as fantasy-type characters.