Is magic in children's books dangerous?

Why good fantasy forms something more than imagination. 

There are parents who discover that their child reads fantasy like one who finds the child talking to himself in an unknown language: with a mixture of curiosity and mild alarm. Suddenly maps appear at the beginning of the book, unpronounceable names whispered under their breath, creatures that do not exist and a plot that takes place far away from any recognizable place. The question arises almost by itself: what is all this doing in a child's head? And, more to the point, is it compatible with faith, or are we opening a door that would be better left closed?

It is useful to begin by clearing up a widespread misunderstanding. When the Christian tradition warns against magic - it is enough to open the Catechism of the Catholic Church to prove it - it is not thinking of adventure novels, but of practices that seek to manipulate the spiritual in real life. To confuse the two would be like supposing that those who read about thieves are learning how to steal. Literature does not teach techniques; it proposes worlds. And that is precisely the key.

Because what is at stake is not the acquisition of esoteric knowledge - no one learns to cast spells by reading them - but the formation of the moral imagination. Here it is appropriate to recover J. R. R. R. Tolkien, who was not exactly naïve in these matters. He spoke of fantasy as «subcreation»: human beings do not invent from nothing, but rearrange what they have received. Therefore, a good fantasy world is not an escape from reality, but a way of seeing it better. At The Lord of the Rings, The ring is not just a magical object; it is an image of power that corrupts. The decisive question is not who possesses it, but who is capable of renouncing it.

Something similar occurs in The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis: the marvelous does not replace God, but refers, in an indirect way, to a higher truth. What saves there is not cunning or strength, but sacrifice.

They are not the only ones. The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander, build a hero who learns, over the course of five books, that greatness is neither inherited nor conquered: it is earned by renouncing it. And Brandon Sanderson, who dominates a good part of the juvenile and adult fantasy shelves of the last two decades -with sagas designed for different ages-, almost always places a similar question at the center: what does someone who could abuse power do with it? They are different worlds, with very different registers, but they share something essential: admiration does not go to the most skillful, but to the most upright.

The point, then, is not whether or not magic appears, but what kind of world that story constructs. There are books where «magic» functions as a symbolic language: it makes visible the difference between good and evil, it dramatizes temptation, it shows the cost of decisions. The magic is not the center; it is the scenery. And there are others where magic is presented as a neutral technique, available to anyone who learns enough, detached from a clear moral order. In the former, power is subordinate to truth; in the latter, power begins to seem the measure of all things. This difference is not academic. A child perceives it, even if he does not formulate it, in that which the story admires and rewards.

However, it would be naive to conclude that any fantasy book is equally valid. There are sagas -The school of good and evil, by Soman Chainani, is an example that circulates a lot among pre-adolescents - where the problem is not the presence of magic but the logic that sustains it: good and evil cease to be real categories and become interchangeable labels, power is presented as a value in itself, and moral ambiguity does not serve to deepen but to dissolve. An adult, educated reader can read that critically. A ten-year-old child, not necessarily. The difference is not in prohibiting, but in knowing what comes at what time and with what accompaniment.

That is why discernment is not so much a matter of lists of permitted or forbidden titles - which age badly and rarely convince anyone - but of a finer look. What is celebrated in this universe? Loyalty or efficiency? The capacity for sacrifice or the ability to impose oneself? The truth or the result? There is no need to turn the reading into a seminar. Sometimes it is enough to ask a question in passing, without the tone of an interrogation: why this character made this decision, what would have happened if he had chosen differently, what do you think about it?.

It also helps to remember something elementary: age matters. The same book does not mean the same thing at nine as it does at fifteen. Children read with admirable seriousness; they do not ironize, they do not take distance, they do not «consume content». They get into the story. That is precisely what makes literature valuable -and what demands care. Not everything has to come at any time, and not everything has to be read in solitude. Between systematic prohibition and indifference there is a quite reasonable space called accompaniment.

It is worth pausing here, because the question is not only whether fantasy does harm. It is also what it does good, and why it is worthwhile. Good fantasy trains something that everyday life cannot always train in the same way: the moral imagination. A child following Frodo carrying the ring is not just following an adventure; he is experiencing, from the inside, the weight of a decision he cannot delegate. He is learning -without anyone explaining it to him- that there are things that cost, that good is not free, that temptation does not always have the face of a monster. And he is learning it in the only way children really learn: by living it, even if only in his imagination.

There is more. Good fantasy gives language to inner experiences that the child already has, but does not know how to name: the fear of not measuring up, the loyalty that remains when it costs, the temptation to take the shortest path. And it not only names them: it makes them desirable or repugnant. It generates desire for good, not just knowledge of good. That difference is not minor. Knowing that loyalty is a virtue is one thing; having accompanied Sam Gamyi to Mount Doom and understanding why he didn't quit is another.

Perhaps the underlying fear is something else: that fantasy will displace reality, that the imaginary will end up blurring the real. Experience suggests the opposite when the books are good. Well-chosen fantasy does not alienate from the world; it widens it. It gives thickness to words that otherwise sound abstract: good, evil, fidelity, temptation, hope. And, incidentally, it introduces an intuition that is not alien to Christianity, even if it comes wrapped in cloaks, swords and improbable creatures. G. K. Chesterton formulated it better than anyone else: fairy tales do not teach that dragons exist -children already know that-, but that dragons can be defeated.

This is not bad news for faith. It is, rather, one of its entrance doors.