About This Blog

Now for the nerdy bits!

Jenn Carson, BA (Hon), CYT, CCYT, MSLIS candidate (June 2015)

This blog covers a variety of young adult book genres, with a special focus on magical realism.  Magic realism, or surrealism, is found in any novel that stretches reality beyond its normal borders and boundaries while still maintaining a distinctively factual undertone.  Our "normal world" is still the standard and the backdrop against which the abnormal plays out.  The surrealism could come in any number of guises: a magic gift or power in an otherwise normal human in normal surroundings, or a strange "rabbit hole" a normal person finds themselves falling down into an alternate reality, or a magical/spiritual experience a normal human experiences which forever alters their view of reality.

According to Zamora and Faris, characteristics of magical realism include five primary traits:

1. An "irreducible" magic which cannot be explained by typical notions of natural law.
2. A realist description that stresses normal, common, every-day phenomena, which is then revised or "refelt" by the marvelous. Extreme or amplified states of mind or setting are often used to accomplish this. (This distinguishes the genre from pure myth or fantasy.)
3. It causes the reader to be drawn between the two views of reality.
4. These two visions or realms nearly merge or intersect.
5. Time is both history and the timeless; space is often challenged; identity is broken down at times.

Works Cited:

Zamora, Lois P., and Wendy B. Faris.  Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1995. Print.