No More Adventures in Wonderland

    Alice in Wonderland is my all time favorite childrens book....ever. No other book even competes to this one, it's sentimental value is incalcuable, truly pricless. My grandfather would pull me up on his lap, and read. Just pick up the book at a random part and read to me. I loved listening to the story of a little girl lost in some magical world of make believe. The book embodies the essence of childhood perfectly. Looking back, this book never gave me anything to fear. There was no deeper meaning or symbolysm, it was just a book written for the imagination of a child, plain and simple. This is not the case with childrens books today. Writers like Carol and Barrie (Neverland) fully entered themselves into the imaginative worlds of children. They wrote stroies appealing to childrens' fantasies, but modern children books deal much more with 'adult like' themes. "Instead of stories about children who will not grow up, we have staories about children who stuggle to survive." It seems that in every modern childrens book, there is an unprecedented amount of adult reality. Many authors of youth fiction have admitted that their stories are greatly influenced by their everyday lives; their struggles, their anxieties, and their fears. J.K Rowling admitts that the Harry Potter series is largely about death. Her dementors are also inspired by a grim topic, her clinical depression. These books are supposed to be written for children and their creative imaginations. Now when these children pick up a book they're getting a lesson on the deeper meaning of life and morality. A child could truly lose his or herself in the children's books of the past, but now, books are making children think more critically about life, and making them prone to nightmares. Is this change in children's novels a good thing or a bad thing? If you were a child, what would you prefer?
       Maria Tartar, author of "No More Adventures in Wonderland" uses pathos in this article. She presents both sides of the question, and leaves the reader to answer the question based on their emotional connection to the piece. "These writers have successfully produced new literary contact zones for adults and children, with monumental narratives about loss, suffering and redemption.
Still, it is hard not to mourn the decline of the literary tradition invented by Carroll and Barrie, for they also bridged generational divides. No other writers more fully entered the imaginative worlds of children — where danger is balanced by enchantment — and reproduced their magic on the page." In today’s stories, those safety zones are rapidly vanishing as adult anxieties edge out childhood fantasy.        
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