Finding Neverland

by Bruce L. Edwards
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." – C. S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” On Other Worlds (Harcourt, 1966), 34.

We all have our Neverlands. Literary spaces of reverie. Places of refuge. Places of recovery. For C. S. Lewis, that “Neverland” was to be found especially in the genre of the fairy tale, an affection and an admiration he shared as a guilty pleasure with his close friend and ally, J. R. R. Tolkien, architect of Middle-earth. As Lewis famously said to Tolkien at one point early in their friendship, "Tollers, people don't write the books we want, so we have to do it for ourselves." (Lewis and his brother Warren pictured.)

What kind of books did Lewis and Tolkien want? Simply put: stories of derring-do, daunting quests, compelling safaris of the spirit, set in landscapes populated by fantastic characters and “talking beasts” that intrigue and delight through repeated encounters. Escapist? Not so, said Lewis and Tolkien. Neverlands not only invite their readers to renew a sense of child-like adventure, they also route them to a central theme that challenges the accepted wisdom of the present age, helping them put this world in perspective as well. Fairy tales push us through a literary portal into a universe more grand, more romantic. More enrapturing than our own, a place where one may witness justice reigning, and the good, the true, and the beautiful honored and celebrated.

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