Magical Realism and the Child Reader: The Case of David Almond's Skellig

In this article Don Latham uses Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" to illustrate how Skellig is an example of magic realism and how it is uniquely suited as such within children's literature. Although this article doesn't directly explore the theoretical aspects of magic realism within children's literature, Latham's method of applying Wendy B. Faris' criteria for magic realism to Almond's novel and then contrasting Skellig with "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" implicitly states that magic realism is possible in children's literature and lays solid groundwork for future theoretical explorations of how magic realism in children's literature is unique from its other, perhaps more common, manifestations.