Y'All Drive Me Crazy With Your Adult Over-Caution

Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I see a lot of objections in the reviews of this book to the "kidnapping" device of the story.  Adults are having a big problem with the concept of kidnapping - but not the fantasy.  I think we often stint on giving credit to children's intelligence.  You only have to look at the cover of this book (with the giant eye of the Kraken and the mermaid) to see this is a book of fantasy.  The first sentence tells you what you already know, that kidnapping children is not a good idea.  Nor, I might add, is luring them away. 
The author has to find a way to get three children from their mundane or painful lives to another place.  One of them has to be a mistake.  No sane child who is old enough to read this would make the assumption that being kidnapped is a fun thing to have happen.  The children in the book know what kidnapping is really about - it's about being tied up and awful things happening.  They have been taught properly.  But this is a book of fantasy where things don't happen as expected in real life. 
I think we need to let go of our adult sensibilities (we read murder mysteries, don't we, and we don't complain about people getting killed or tortured in them for our pleasure or it leading to readers who will go out and murder in real life) and enter this fantasy world that Ibbotson creates where there are nice people and not-nice people who do wicked things for what they think are good reasons and have silly opinions on "aristos" or men or whatever. 
Ibbotson's work is great fun to read.  There's lots of imagination and gentle humor and they are slightly sillier than, say, Diana Wynne Jones's books. Another fantasy writer who would appall adults and raise the hairs on the necks of kids is John Bellairs. 



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