The story of fantasy in relation to children’s literature is one of forceful contradictions: it is criticized for being fraudulent, irrational, frightening, and overly imaginative; for being formulaic, escapist, and not imaginative enough; for being suitable only for children and for being suitable only for adults. The seeds of this energetic debate take us into the very source of story making: imagination and reason. The origin of the word _fantasy_ lies in the Greek φαυτασια (_phantasia_), “a making visible” or “to show.” It begins its career in written English as both _fantasy_ and _fancy_ (derived from spellings _fantsy_, _fansy_, _fancie_). Its early primary meanings refer to a faculty of mind: “mental apprehension of an object of perception; the faculty by which this is performed” or “the image impressed on the mind by an object of sense.” A primary sense of fantasy in the early modern period is “imagination; the process or the faculty of forming mental representations of things not actually present” (_OED_). _Imagination_ is the Latin translation of the Greek _phantasia_: in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, _fantasy_, _fancy_, and _imagination_ are virtually interchangeable. In meaning, they relate to the faculty of forming mental representations and to the way...