ESCAPISM

'A couple of years ago a friend of extremely left-wing and politically correct bent was looking at the shelf of children's books and remarked that they were all "escapist". She felt that my children had not been encouraged to engage in the gritty problems and troubles of real life through their reading. No, they had not. I always steered clear of "issue literature" when choosing picture books for them - but then, there were few of that kind available for the under-fives in the early 1970s and early 1980s, though occasionly there were titles aimed at helping overcome a fear of dogs, for example, or the dentist. But she did not mean that sort of simple, helpful story. She was looking through the fiction they read between the ages of around eight to thirteen or so, before they moved on to adult novels. Escapist? I would call it imaginative. But if the lives of children in Elizabethan England, or a magical countytry called Narnia, and the stories about creatures called Moomins are a means of escape from the often dull and tiresome everyday world, as well as being good books, what is the argument against that? Computer games are escapist, going to football matches or the cinema, or watching soaps or costume drama on television, are all forms of escapism. We need some.'
Susan Hill, Howards End is on the Landing, p.196.