This study will examine three children's books to determine how children are represented. The three books are Linda Crew's Children of the River, Michael Ende's The Neverending Story, and Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly. The most realistic representation of children is found in Crew's book on a Cambodian girl's experiences in the United States. The other two books are fanciful adventures, although there are important differences between them, especially in terms of the purposes of the two books.
The study will argue that the various representations of children in the three books create a comprehensive set of possibilities for young readers seeking entertainment, role models, and inspiration for perspectives on life. In other words, the books should not be seen as competitive with one another for designation as "best" or "most realistic" or "most imaginative." To the contrary, they complement one another with their various representations of children.
Ende's story is the most purely fanciful. Hamilton's collection of stories are certainly marked by flights of imagination, but authentic "American black" experiences inspired them. These specific experiences give Hamilton's folktales a foothold in reality that is missing from Ende's romantic adventure.
Ende's story deals with the development of the heroism in the boy Bastian Balthazar Bux, fulfilling every child's fantasy of being powerful in a world where adults usually have all the power. The children in Hamilton's stories, on the other hand, have specific roots in the American black experience, especially the experience of slavery. As a result, the moral and spiritual lessons of the folktales have to do with either escaping bondage or somehow learning to cope with it in a creative and empowering way.
Crew's book, in contrast, is firmly rooted in a sense of reality. It is, after all, "based on historical realities" (Crew Acknowledgement page). Crew writes about a C...