Once upon a time, there was a student who was prone to despair. She could feel it moving silently as a shadow along the wall, dimming the room with its presence. It seeped out of her notebooks as she studied terrible things. Things like violence, injustice, war. Things she knew were important to know. And yet, sometimes, as she sank down in her chair and put her head down on her books, the world felt like too much to bear. She studied history; the past. Its lessons could be twisted sometimes, making it seem like nothing could ever change. Every time those thoughts crossed the student’s mind, the despair grew a little until it loomed over her.

Spoiler alert: I’m the student, and the despair doesn’t win.

It’s true, however, that what I’ve studied could leave nearly anyone despairing about just how bad things can be. I research the entanglements of race, religion and Asian American literature. My work touches on topics like the Korean War, the Los Angeles race riots in the ’90s, and the ways systemic issues perpetuate inequities. The knowledge I’ve gained is necessary for a better understanding of the world — but unchecked despair, I’ve found, is dangerous. It breeds cynicism and inaction. To remedy that, I’ve found a rather unconventional cure: reading fairy tales.

Most recently, it’s been the German writer Michael Ende’s 1979 fantasy novel, “The Neverending Story,” which follows the magical adventures of a boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux. I reached for “The Neverending Story” recently, on a cold, gray day when I could feel that old sinking feeling that the world was unraveling. That feeling, plus the practical realities of the day-to-day that don’t stop, was too much. My mind was too flighty to even muster a concrete to-do list. But “The Neverending Story” had been able to keep me afloat once before.

In middle school, I was a misfit. I’d read on the school bus and in the cafeteria to get through each day. “The Neverending Story” had been one of the books that had kept me company, giving me a brief reprieve from middle school life. I still had the same secondhand copy from all those years ago, and I settled in now to read it once again. The illustration on the jacket cover featured a familiar scene: magical creatures, a boy perched atop a giant lion, a distant city.

I opened up the book.

We often see children’s literature and fairy tales as relevant only for children themselves — their entertainment, their development, their learning. It’s something we’re supposed to age out of as we grow up and become adults with adult concerns and adult books to read. Reading children’s fiction, fairy tales and fables becomes foolishness. A waste of time when there are bills to be paid at best and a futile escape from the “real world” at worst.

But I’ve found that some of the wisest people are those who cultivate an openness to reading children’s fiction again in adulthood — even though we’re “grown up” now. Arguably, the fear of being too childish in our curiosities, solutions and ideas is childishness itself. “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up,” scholar and author C.S. Lewis once said.

Lewis — often a dominant figure in discussions of children’s literature — certainly wasn’t reading fairy tales and children’s stories in his 50s out of a hope to escape, but a desire to understand. Having fought in the trenches of World War I and lived through World War II, he was well acquainted with serious matters of the world. Over half a century later, his principle still applies. If we can put away our fear of childishness, these stories offer a wealth of wisdom and wonder to help us live better.


When reading fairy tales, I find myself believing in things again — not so much in elves or dragons, but in courage, hope and love.

In “The Neverending Story,” Bastian Balthazar Bux is everything you wouldn’t want to be in middle school: He is overweight, friendless, bullied. On top of that, Bastian’s mother has recently died, and his grieving father has withdrawn from him. When Bastian runs into a bookstore to evade his bullies, he comes across a mysterious book entitled “The Neverending Story.” A voracious reader, Bastian can’t resist the temptation: He steals the book. As fate would have it (of course), it’s not an ordinary book. As Bastian reads it, something magical happens: He finds himself literally transported to the novel’s magical realm, Fantastica. But Fantastica is in grave danger, and Bastian takes up the quest to save this enchanted land.

Professor Birgit Dankert, a scholar and biographer of Ende, tells me that in crafting “The Neverending Story,” “Ende skillfully assembled selected motifs and sequences from European myths and narrative traditions.” This wealth of mythological influences is what makes reading the novel so much fun. Fantastica is full of creatures drawn from those stories: will-o’-the-wisps, dragons, centaurs, night-hobs. The novel’s narrative arc shares much in common with myths and folktales: quests, trials, prescient dreams. Bastian fights evil, becomes a hero, confronts his own inner demons, and goes home transformed. In that sense, “The Neverending Story” is the fairy tale of fairy tales.

Which is, arguably, its strength. Journalist Adam Gopnik once wrote, “Fairy stories are not rich because they are true, and they lose none of their light because someone lit the candle. It is here that the atheist and the believer meet. … Atheists need ghosts and kings and magical uncles and strange coincidences, living fairies and thriving Lilliputians, just as much as the believers do, to register their understanding that a narrow material world, unlit by imagination, is inadequate to our experience, much less to our hopes.”

The key is to ensure that these stories — or, namely, their lessons — aren’t earmarked just for the kid’s-table crowd. “Fairy stories in the modern lettered world have been relegated to the ‘nursery,’ as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused,” J.R.R. Tolkien bemoaned in a 1947 essay. Historically, fairy tales weren’t stuck in the nursery. They were stories for everyone, told around fires and hearths, in taverns and tents. They offered adults insight for navigating life and understanding themselves — and they still can. “Fairytales,” psychologist Marie-Louise Von Franz wrote in an influential 1970 study, “are the purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious psychic processes.” In a more academic way, she writes a complement to Gopnik’s take: Children’s stories and fairy tales provide a window into how the human psyche works, and illuminate the human experiences that connect us across cultures, eras, religions and languages. By reworking our common experiences in fantastical form, fairy tales have given people, and can continue to give us, a way to make sense of who we are and how we live.

In America, stories of fantasy and fiction have often been categorized as purely entertainment, or as forms of escape from life’s stressors. In fact, Ende himself actually faced accusations of fostering escapism in his writing. “Realism was the literary program of the hour,” Dankert says of Ende’s sociopolitical context in what was, at the time, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Critics thought that literature — especially literature for children and young adults — “should prepare people for a self-determined, democratic life.” Because Ende wrote fantasies based on fairy tales and myths, many critics felt that his work failed to adequately prepare readers to face their real futures in the real world.

But the idea that fairy tales can positively impact our real lives is a fundamental part of “The Neverending Story” itself. In the story, Bastian doesn’t just momentarily flee his troubles by entering a magic realm through a magic book. It’s not some clever escape. Bastian returns to his own “real world” transformed — a once-bullied boy now braver and wiser, more confident in himself. His adventures tested and tried him. The lessons of Fantastica helped him understand his values, and himself, with more clarity. And it makes the real world a better place. As he recounts his fantastical stories, another extraordinary thing happens: His grief-stricken father comes back to himself. In Bastian’s storytelling, the relationship between father and son knits itself back together again.


“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness.”

—  C.S.Lewis

The real-world inspiration of notable adult readers of children’s tales is abundant. Jane Goodall credits “Dr. Dolittle,” “The Wind in the Willows” and “Tarzan” for sparking her interest in animals and deepening her commitment to conservation. Dr. Doolittle knows the secret language of animals; Tarzan lives with apes; and “The Wind in the Willows” is full of the misadventures of talking critters — Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr. Toad. These books are all tinged with the impossible, and yet they made Goodall’s work possible. In a 2014 interview, she also noted “The Lord of the Rings” is a story she returns to often. “The book is like an allegory of the challenges we face in today’s dark times.” In the face of these challenges — like environmental degradation and more — Goodall argues that “Lord of the Rings” brings us the hope to carry on and to take on seemingly impossible tasks.

Country star and philanthropist Dolly Parton credits fairy tales for teaching her to dream of a life beyond Appalachia and giving her the courage to venture forth in pursuit of her dreams — even becoming a literacy advocate herself. “A Wrinkle in Time” led to astronaut Janice Voss’ fascination with outer space and showed her that girls could excel in math and science. In 1997, on her fourth flight into space, Voss even took a copy of “A Wrinkle in Time” along with her, reading the novel in orbit. Children’s literature can propel and sustain our engagement in the serious things that occupy our adult lives and thoughts.

I emerged from “The Neverending Story” — and from other fairy tale-adjacent tales — feeling more capable, not less, of facing the real world. Whenever I’ve spent a few hours lost in fantastical realms like Ende’s, the trace of magic that follows reminds me that there’s wonder everywhere, even when I don’t quite feel it. There’s new possibilities, including the possibility for good, for change. I find myself believing in things again — not so much in elves or dragons, but in courage, hope and love. To me, these are the things that make a difficult world, wracked with its painful histories, still worth living in. They make the world worth loving.

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“Fairytales are excellent narratives with which to think through a range of human experiences: joy, disbelief, disappointment, fear, envy, disaster, greed, devastation, lust, and grief (just to name a few),” writes historian Marguerite Johnson. They “helped our ancestors make sense of the unpredictability or randomness of life … and sometimes showed us how courage, determination and ingenuity could be employed even by the most disempowered to change the course of events.”

One recent study identifies how traditional folktales and fairy tales can often provide fodder for discussing concepts like resilience, meaning-making, and self-realization. Introducing fairy tales into group therapy sessions led by a folklorist and a clinical psychologist, researchers examined how discussions of these stories and prompts that allowed participants to narrate their own lives led to an array of positive results. Participants in the study reported “increased personal growth, self-acceptance, and an enhanced sense of appreciation of life and personal strengths, together with decreased levels of anxiety.” Maybe, just maybe, spending our time in fairy tales can make “happily ever after”—or at least “happier for now”— possible in the real world, warts and all.

Like Bastian, I’ve found that leaving a book — finishing a story, closing the covers — doesn’t mean leaving its magic or its lessons behind. All the wisdom and wonder that might be tucked between once upon a time and happily ever after is for us, and for our times. Dankert says: “The overarching message of (Ende’s) poetry is the joy of beauty, humanity, and play, as well as the clear rejection of malice, indifference, and violence.” What better message, for anyone at any age?

This story appears in the January/February 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.

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