The wood between the worlds

Virtual worlds have been attracting a huge amount of interest this year, driven by the success of Second Life, World of Warcraft, Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and a host of others that have hit the headlines. When faced with something so shiny, baffling and new it is reassuring to see that imaginative artists have always intuitively understood both the charms and the dangers of leaving this world for another. Children’s writers in particular have made it their business to dramatise the process of imaginative escape into other worlds, and so children’s literature is full of that liminal moment when a child crosses the threshold and leaves the safe, ordered world they know for some strange new world in which everything is entirely different. This is of course a staple of narrative, not just children’s narratives, but there seems to be something about children’s minds which makes the feeling of leaving real life and entering a magical new world particularly seductive.