Fantasy and the unlikely hero

Fantasy books have many reasons for their appeal. In fact, fantasy and sci-fi are the genres of choice for talented YA readers. These books are full of intriguing ideas, complex connections, rich description, alternative worlds and, at their best, well chosen, nuanced language.   

I believe there is also another reason readers love fantasy. G.K. Chesterton says,” Fairy tales are more than real, not because they tell us there are dragons, but they tell us the dragons can be defeated.” And it is often the unlikely hero who defeats the dragon. I have always been a fan of the type of fantasy that comes knocking right at our door–the door of an everyday person–and won’t go away until you let it in. Think of Gandalf scratching the mark on Bilbo’s door, Lucy Pevinse stumbling through a wardrobe and having tea with a faun, the letters flying through the everyday mail slot on the Dursley’s door, or Neil Gaiman’s Richard Mayhew ending up below the streets of London in the middle of an average day. 

We all want to be able to defeat the dragon, to get the strange phone call or knock on the door that reminds us that mystery may be just around the corner.