A Necessary Fantasy?: The Heroic Figure in Children's Popular Culture (review)

Abstract

A Necessary Fantasy?: The Heroic Figure in Children's Popular Culture has interesting essays about a variety of novels and other media, but the title and subtitle are a bit misleading. Not all of the articles are about fantasy; many of the essays discuss books best categorized as Romantic Realism, rather than fantasy. Readers will understand the focus of the book better if they take time to read its introduction, in which Jones and Watkins state that the focus of the book lies not with the fantastic, but with the heroic. They write: "The contributors of this book address, from a variety of critical perspectives, the central issues of what constitutes heroism and the nature of the heroic figure in American, Australian, and British Popular Culture" (1 [emphasis added]).