La Trobe

Magical Realism and the Child Reader: The Case of David Almond's Skellig

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journal contribution
posted on 2025-06-30, 05:07 authored by Don Latham
In this article Don Latham uses Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" to illustrate how Skellig is an example of magic realism and how it is uniquely suited as such within children's literature. Although this article doesn't directly explore the theoretical aspects of magic realism within children's literature, Latham's method of applying Wendy B. Faris' criteria for magic realism to Almond's novel and then contrasting Skellig with "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" implicitly states that magic realism is possible in children's literature and lays solid groundwork for future theoretical explorations of how magic realism in children's literature is unique from its other, perhaps more common, manifestations.

History

Journal

The Looking Glass : New Perspectives on Children's Literature

ISSN

1551-5680

Volume

10

Issue

1

Publisher

La Trobe University

Section Title

Alice's Academy

Author Biography

Don Latham is an assistant professor in the College of Information at Florida State University. His research interests include magical realism, identity formation, and socialization in young adult literature. He has just completed a book on David Almond, which will be published by Scarecrow Press in 2006. He has published articles in Children's Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, Children's Literature in Education, and The ALAN Review.

Date Created

2008-12-09

Rights Statement

Essays and articles published in The Looking Glass may be reproduced for non-profit use by any educational or public institution; letters to the editor and on-site comments made by our readers may not be used without the expressed permission of that individual. Any commercial use of this journal, in whole or in part, by any means, is prohibited. Authors of accepted articles assign to The Looking Glass the right to publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and make it permanently available electronically. They retain the copyright and, 90 days after initial publication, may republish it in any form they wish as long as The Looking Glass is acknowledged as the original source.

Data source

OJS data migration 2025: https://ojs.latrobe.edu.au/ojs/index.php/tlg/article/view/95

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