In concert with the Cambridge Public Library and the Cambridge Forum, the Horn Book, Inc., was proud to sponsor two evenings with Newbery medalist Susan Cooper. On Wednesday, November 14, 2007, Cooper participated in a roundtable discussion, “The Writing of Fantasy,” with novelist Gregory Maguire and Horn Book editor Roger Sutton; the following evening she gave a lecture, “Unriddling the World: Fantasy and Children” for the Cambridge Forum. On this page we offer several articles about fantasy and children’s literature from the Horn Book archives.

Articles by Susan Cooper

There and Back Again: Tolkien Reconsidered (March/April 2002)
Cooper looks again at a rather well-known trilogy by one of her Oxford dons

Susan Cooper declares Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce a future classic
From our November/December 2000 special issue on the future of children's books

A Second Look: The Nargun and the Stars (September/October 1986)
Considering Patricia Wrightson's “wonderful book, with a hypnotic sense of place”

Articles by Gregory Maguire

Future Classics: Gregory Maguire on Jill Paton Walsh's The Green Book
From our November/December 2000 special issue on the future of children's books

Featured review of Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass (November/December 2000)

More about fantasy

What Makes a Good Fantasy?: Special Effects by Deirdre Baker (September/October 2006)
How and why do our best fantasies stand out?

The Republic of Heaven by Philip Pullman (November/December 2001)
On the death of God and its consequences, from our special issue on politics and religion

A Second Look: Five Children and It by Lloyd Alexander (May/June 1985)
One master storyteller appreciates another

Fantasy and Reality by Laurence Yep (April 1978)
“Fantasy . . . is intimately bound up with our sense of reality”

The Weak Place in the Cloth: A Study of Fantasy for Children: Part I (October 1973)
The Weak Place in the Cloth: A Study of Fantasy for Children: Part II (December 1973)
Jane Langton sets out to answer the three primary questions each fantasy asks—What If? Then what? So what?—and does so brilliantly

High Fantasy and Heroic Romance by Lloyd Alexander (December 1971)
"I am amazed and thankful we can still be deeply moved by worlds that never existed . . . "

The Flat-Heeled Muse by Lloyd Alexander (April 1965)
The author of the Prydain Chronicles discusses the need for ground rules when writing fantasy