Fantastical Tales: The Genre You Didn’t Know You Needed in the Classroom, a guest post by Alysa Wishingrad

With such wide and wonderful variety in middle grade literature today, educators can choose from a great many titles and genres for classroom use. We have realistic, contemporary, fantasy, historical fiction, graphic novels, and both short and long form non-fiction. Within those genres there’s middle grade, upper middle grade, lower middle grade, solid middle grade. All of these categories and sub-categories are important for our readers, but they can be hard to distinguish and keep up with.

Yet here I am to add another division to the conversation— the difference between fantasy and fantastical stories—and why it’s especially important to make this distinction when using literature as an inter-disciplinary bridge in the classroom.

First things first, let’s define some terms:

Fantasy involves the creation of intricate new worlds complete with unique rules, creatures, cultures, and some magical element. Whether or not the stories are built on cultural beliefs or myths, fantasy offers an escape to a time and place unlike our own. Adia Kelbara and The Circle of Shamans by Isi Hendrix, Esme Symes-Smith’s Sir Callie series, and A Wolf For A Spell by Karah Sutton are all wonderful examples of the genre.

Fantastical tales also involve a good deal of world building, but they are grounded in our recognizable reality. There may still be magic, monsters, or other-worldly beings, but the difference lies in the intersection between fantastical elements and ordinary settings. The lines between the mundane and the extraordinary are blurred. And while these books offer messages of hope and empowerment, they also tend to wrestle with more complex themes around truth, history, and social order.

By taking historical settings and or events and adding a twist of the magical, fantastical tales add a layer of protective padding to these heavy ideas, without minimizing the very big real-world issues these books tackle.

The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy by Anne Ursu, Once There Was by Kiyahsi Monsef, Max In the House of Spies by Adam Gidwitz, and yes, my own books all sit on this shelf of the fantastical.

So, you might be wondering, why bother to distinguish between the genres? Monsters are monsters, and magic is magic regardless of whether they occur in a world we recognize or not.

The need for the distinction lies in fantastical tales’ ability to intersect with and support curriculum in exactly the same way historical and issue-driven realistic fiction do. They provide perfect springboards for interdisciplinary learning, bridging the gap between language arts and other subjects such as science, history, and social studies.

Integrating Fantastical Tales with Science

Fantasy books can provide rich opportunities for exploring concepts of earth science, technology, engineering, and math. But so many more educational opportunities open up when you take a fantastical story that melds the real world with mythical elements.

Heroes of the Water Monster (Healer of the Water Monster, Book 2) by Brian Young does this beautifully by melding the very real experience of two present day Diné boys with the plight of a water monster. Readers are not only whisked away on a reading adventure, but they are also presented with an impactful tale of two boys learning to work together with the water monster to save their present world from both ecological disaster and the historical pain of the Navajo people.

Reality + Myth = engaging reading and a platform for curricular exploration.

Unraveling History

Stories intertwined with historical settings offer unique lenses through which to explore the past and interrogate how history has been told.

My own books, The Verdigris Pawn, and Between Monsters And Marvels, both dive deeply into questions of how, by whom, and which histories have been told.

The former is set in a pre-industrial, medieval time period. The land is ruled by a terrible despot, whose son and heir apparent is made to spend his days studying the history of his family’s illustrious and morally upright rule. With no exposure to a countervailing narrative, the main character, Beau, accepts his family’s (false) version of events. Then he meets a girl in possession of an illegal magic. Not until she shows Beau the extent of the inequity in the land does he begin to question the history he has been taught.

I do not mean to imply that all of history is tainted, but exposing student to fictional characters who actively interrogate their own previously held beliefs provides a powerful model for student of what critical thinking and civic engagement can look like in their own worlds and lives.  

Exploring Social Structure and Social Studies

Any story that provides a window into diverse cultures, societies, and political systems provides fertile ground for exploring concepts of social structure and governance. But an added twist of the fantastical can help students take a step back from the heat of reality, while still offering insights to support discussions about power, justice, equity, and the complexities of human interaction.

The Gilded Girl by Alyssa Colman does this beautifully. The main character wants nothing more than to learn to harness her natural inborn magic. On the surface, the book is an engaging coming of age story. But the story is told against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, a time in history when the gap between rich and poor was blatantly obvious in the streets of cities. Workers were beginning to organize to protect their rights, immigrants were struggling against biases, and organized efforts blocked them from participating in the American dream. Yes there is magic, but there is also an emotionally engaging look at these contemporary issues of social structure.

There is so much to be gained in the classroom by integrating more fantastical tales. By harnessing the power of the fantastical, educators can not only inspire curiosity, foster empathy, and engage readers, but also build a bridge between highly engaging stories and curricular standards and benchmarks.

Meet the author

Alysa Wishingrad writes fantastical stories for young readers, tales that ask; is the truth really true? Her favorite stories are those that meld the historical with the fantastic, and that find ways to shine a light on both the things that divide and unite us all.

She is the author of Between Monsters and Marvels, which was a 2024 Golden Kite Finalist, and The Verdigris Pawn, a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.

Alysa lives in the Hudson Valley with her family, two demanding rescue dogs, and a cat-shaped dog, who are either monsters or marvels, depending on the day.

Please visit her at Alysawishingrad.com

On Twitter @agwishingrad

On Instagram and Threads @alysawishingradwrites

Filed under: Guest Post