Magical Realism and Children's Literature

Last week we read two short magical realism stories. I kind of had an idea of what that meant from other stories we had read this semester (Moths, Metamorphosis), but it still kind of surprised me. I'll be completely honest, I'm not a huge fan of this particular genre, but it was nice to have the experience and learn about the genre itself.

To me, it's just odd. I get fantasy novels, like the Harry Potter series-- where the whole setting and all of the characters have some what of a magical being. But, throwing aspects of that into a setting like the one I'm living in was weird. I think I feel this way because I know how I would react to situations like an old man with wings and it would be COMPLETELY different than the reaction of these stories. I feel like magical realism is trying to mix fantasy and real life too much, to the point that its weird and sometimes uncomfortable.  

I also wanted to touch on one of the discussions we had in class over "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and how it is known as a children's story. We kind of debated whether it should be or not. I completely see both sides of what was said in class. Yes, these people treated this old man very poorly, pretty much stole from him and then celebrated the day he disappeared. It seems awful, indeed, but there were lessons to be learned from the story. All I wanted to add was that many children's stories have cruel aspects in order to teach the children a lesson. If you really look into those stories you were told as a kid, you might be surprised at what really happened in them-- you were probably too lost in the magical aspects of the story to even see the horrible things going on. My example of this will be Disney's Beauty and the Beast-- do you remember how the beast locked Belle up? How about how he reacted to her going the West Wing? And do I even need to mention Gaston?... the way he lusted over Belle was gross and not very kid friendly. That was just to name a few,

Just go through those stories you loved as a child. . .  you might be surprised.