earticle

영어

This paper explores the current trends in the popularity of youth fantasy books, expecially Joan K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997) and seeks to investigate the educational implication of the images reflected in the children’s fantasy books. Fantasy should be understood as a medium of illuminating another level of interpretation to understand its appeal and popularity to children. This paper seeks the reason why fantasy books capture children’s attention with wild enthusiasm in Korea and what themes have attracted them. Fantasy can empower children. By reading fantasy literature, children meet the heroes of the story and can identify with them in the heroic quest of the story. Fantasy may help children as readers to deal with issues of suppression and subordination and provide them with the liberated area from the authority and supervision of school and adults. Such subversion of power may be a factor that is drawing children to the Potter series. In the literary world of fantasy, children can exercise their own power over their lives without adults’ interference. On the journey, children join the hero’s adventure as an educational experience in self-knowledge and self-realization.