Modern Children's Fiction

Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Children's Fiction

The second paragraph of this book looks at the titled 'Narnia: An Imaginary Land as Container of Moral and Emotional Adventure' talks about how the 'Chronicles of Narnia' uses an imaginary land and mythical creatures to reflect and embody the real emotions from the human characters and the moral choices from real life. Fiction is often used as escapism where the reader is transported to an new world, in this book the central characters escape the war by moving to the country then escape from their normal lives as they are transported to a new magical world. The reader is invited to accompany the characters on their journey of escapism, this method could help the reader to relate to the characters, feeling empathy with their situation. 

The similarities between Lucy's emotions and the character of Mr Tumnus as well as his relationship with the queen explore Lucy's real life and how she feels at this point in time. The mythical characters are act as physical embodiments of human character traits, emotions and beliefs.

the book combines fictional mythical creatures and strange new worlds with dark realistic subject matter such as war and the loss/ separation from a loved one. the mythical creatures and scenarios act as a way fro the children to navigate complex emotions brought up by their circumstances. The character demonstrate complexity, for the most part they are not presented as essentially good or bad. They are battling emotions and make decisions based on these feelings. They make mistakes but are results of how they feel and what has happened to them. The interaction between the fantastical and realistic is interesting an poses some questions

Does using mythical creatures to embody emotions and moral lessons influence children's attitudes. Some of my research suggests that children do not learn moral lessons from creatures, only from characters that they see as human

If this is the case then does the inclusion of the children (who have similarities to the readers) make assimilation of the moral and emotional lessons more effective. If they actually see a character they relate to learning the lesson are the resulting attitude changes easier to predict. 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9-6XnN4Df_8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=ambiguity+in+children%27s+fiction&ots=2AF9FefB8P&sig=COY8JNR0wfYDCJ_D1M2vUEy95tU#v=onepage&q=ambiguity%20in%20children's%20fiction&f=false