A Landscape with Dragons.

Michael D. O'Brien, - A Landscape with Dragons, Ignatius Press, 1998 (2nd ed.), pp. 166, plus 95 pages of recommended reading titles.

In this hyper-active age of galloping technology, is story-telling still important for people? For children, for their parents? Most of us, I trust, would answer an emphatic YES; story-telling is ever-important. Christians, no less than others, need more than science, technology, catechism, how-to manuals, and the like, in order to become fully human and grasp the truth about life. We need stories, powerful and vivid stories about good and evil, about heroes and dragons, about struggle and danger and victory. Indeed, the Bible is one long, manifold story--about salvation.

Michael O'Brien, noted Canadian artist/writer and Catholic father of six children, home-schooled, be it noted, by himself and his wife, has written a splendid book on story-telling. This is no mere brief recreation for the bedtime of children. It is a serious component of a child's and adolescent's education. And it is profoundly endangered by recent revolutions in human culture.

Our western world was until recently, in living memory, fundamentally Christian. The signs of coming Christian collapse were there, and the collapse has happened. It is revealed in the literature that is studied by our children in their schools. And this literature is apt to further erode or distort or efface any remaining Christian shape or symbols in the children's minds and souls.

O'Brien's chapter one is Encounters with Dragons. These mythical beasts are quite real in the minds of many children, and important in literature of many ages. They used to unswervingly represent evil (thus Satan in the Apocalypse). The dragon must not win. Nor must he be psychologized away as "our dark side." The "good dragon" blurs the line between good and evil.

In chapter two, O'Brien relates the richness brought to his family life after his taking up the regular telling of fairy stories to his children. They are helped to discern "the true shape of reality" by these stories. He warns against modem "demythologizes" who pretend that Judaeo-Christian stories are merely our variation on "universal human myths."

Chapter three, A Child's Garden of Paganism, is about culture and the search for truth. Pagan cultures were truly horrifying and cruel. Pagans needed salvation, not just mystical escape. It came with Christ, and showed itself 300 years later in a great flowering of Christian art. But gnosticism (salvation by sophisticated pseudo-knowledge) threatened the Faith then, as does its New Age successor in our times.

Chapter four is about the New Illiteracy, called "The mortal foe of my children". Television has become the great shaper of an ominous global culture, provoking enormous increase in crime. O'Brien here critiques brilliantly some typical modern authors, including Walt Disney, and sample movies.

Chapter five, is on Neopagan literature for children. Fantasy writing is burgeoning, because it attracts the child. The great recent Christian examples are Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Some others is "blatantly anti-Christian." But in between these extremes are a grey area of children's literature that is "spiritual indoctrination (into evil and falsehood) wrapped in pleasing adventure packages." It is often difficult for the ordinary parent to discern the value or harm in these writings and videos. But O'Brien greatly helps us.

Chapter six, is on "The restoration of Christian Storytelling." A brief chapter seven concludes with an essay on the utter necessity for Christians to shape a new culture that will save the world from ever-worsening evils.

O'Brien's book is a wonderful challenge and education to concerned parents. It is warmly recommended.