Fantasy in Children’s Stories: An Applied Study on Hyeon‑Ju Lee’s The Happiest Tree: A Story of Growing Up

Abstract

This study explores the deployment of fantasy in children’s literature through an applied analysis of the Arabic edition of Hyeon‑Ju Lee’s The Happiest Tree: A Story of Growing Up (Ababic: Hayāt al‑Shajarah), with the aim of elucidating its artistic, critical, and cultural dimensions. The significance of the research lies in the capacity of fantasy to enrich the child’s reading experience by harnessing imaginative energy that links aesthetic pleasure with value‑formation and the cultivation of literary taste. The study identifies the mechanisms by which fantastic elements contribute to shaping the text’s narrative structure, assesses their suitability for childhood stages, and considers their adaptability across differing cultural contexts.

Adopting a descriptive–analytical method, the research traces the manifestations of fantasy via the personification of nature, the development of temporality, and the representation of space, while analyzing their effects on affect, imagination, symbolic cognition, and other psychological characteristics of the child.

The findings indicate that fantasy in The Happiest Tree: A Story of Growing Up functions as a symbolic‑aesthetic narrative architecture that nurtures the child’s cognition and broadens horizons, while simultaneously addressing themes such as solitude (rather than unity), love, memory, and belonging in forms attuned to the child’s capacities and sensibilities and conducive to refining literary taste. The study further demonstrates the flexibility of the fantastic in cross‑cultural reception and its potential to serve as a bridge for civilizational dialogue, with due regard for cultural specificities.

Accordingly, the study recommends expanding the presence of fantasy in Arabic children’s literature to advance cognitive, affective, and psychological aims through indirect artistic strategies; supporting the translation of distinguished models from other cultures; integrating this literary mode into curricula as a means of cultivating imagination and literary taste; encouraging specialized critical studies; and leveraging digital technologies in the production of fantastic texts aligned with contemporary childhood interests.