What Do You Do When Your Book-Loving Kid Asks “Is Magic Real?”

One day, my daughter came home from second grade visibly upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I got into a fight with my teacher.”

“Really?” This was unusual. It didn’t sound like my apple-polishing, wannabe teacher’s pet at all. “What happened?”

“She told me that The Spiderwick Chronicles were fictional and I told her that they weren’t. She said I was wrong and I screamed at her ‘YOU NEED TO RESPECT MY BELIEFS!’”

Uh-oh.

That whole exchange might’ve been my fault. Because ever since my daughter was old enough to ask about all of the magical things that happened in her favorite books, I’d been dodging the big question underlying all her queries — namely, “Is magic real?”

Because, much like the apprehensive judge in the original Miracle on 34^th Street who was tasked with ruling on whether or not there really was a Santa Claus, I was dead-set certain that I did not want to be the person that looked my daughter in the eye and told her that there wasn’t any magic in the world.

Her “fight” with her teacher had been about one of her favorite book series of all time — The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, a fantastic serialized adventure that is written with a framing device that claims that the events described within the books are actually true.

The first book opens with DiTerlizzi and Black telling a story about how the Grace children (the heroes of Spiderwick) met up with the authors after a book signing and delivered an amazing manuscript that recounted their incredible ordeal. The series is about how the Grace kids discover a remarkable field guide to the magical creatures that secretly inhabit our world and — once they learn of the book’s existence — find themselves under siege by dark beings that want the guide for themselves.

The Spiderwick Chronicles completely inspired my daughter. She read and re-read them and she started spending time outdoors with a notebook, trying to observe and catalog any magical creatures she might encounter. It was painfully cute and it reaffirmed something wonderful — she believed that the world was a magical place.

But, after her argument with her teacher, her faith was shaken. Had I lied to her? (Either directly or by omission?) Was magic made up? She wanted me to answer her seriously.

So I thought about it long and hard and I came to a surprising realization.

I believe in magic.

Let me make that sound a little bit less like I’m trying to resuscitate Tinkerbell — I believe in the potential for magic in the world.

My daughter’s question had revealed me as a hardcore magical agnostic. At my core, I truly believe, “Well, why can’t magic exist?”

You might say, “There’s no proof that magic exists,” and I’d respond, with all honesty, “Show me proof that it doesn’t exist.” It’s a cyclical argument that can be applied to many of the metaphysical elements of the world around us.

There are times where even the smartest, most analytical people in the world have to shrug their shoulders and say, “I can’t really explain it.” And I like that. I like the deference and humility in those moments. Because anyone who tells you with absolute certainty that they can explain everything is lying. They can’t. There are many, many things in this world that are still gloriously unknowable.

So if your child asks you, “Did dragons ever exist?” — “Yes” and “No” are not the only two answers you can give. A more honest (and intellectually engaging) answer might be, “I don’t know. What do you think? Why do you think people have been writing about dragons for thousands of years?”

It’s not just answering a question with a question. It’s encouraging your child to consider all of the endless possibilities in the world. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t.

The key is not spoon-feeding them absolutes. The world is not binary, not everything is black and white. Also, personally, I think it’s important, at a young age, to teach children that there are questions that can’t be answered easily. There are questions that their parents don’t know the answers to.

And that’s wonderful. That’s exciting. Because it lets them know that not every section of the map has been filled in yet. There are big areas — both physically and metaphysically — where humanity just has to point to the map, shrug their shoulders, and say, “There be dragons.”

This is why I love children’s books about magic. They introduce kids to the idea of a limitless horizon.

And if you think you can see and empirically define that horizon, you’re lying. You don’t really see it. You don’t really know. Because there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

That’s a very flowery way of saying that I completely 100% believe in the potential for magic in this world. Because I have no proof that magic is impossible and, frankly, the world is a more interesting place without having that door permanently closed.

So that’s what I told my book-loving daughter. Is magic real? I don’t know. That’s a question for her to answer for herself.

I just hope that she keeps reading, keeps exploring, keeps coming up with new questions that expand her mind — and occasionally cause her to fight with her teachers — because the world needs more people who aren’t afraid to look into the scary ambiguity of the unknown, confident in the knowledge that they can’t know everything, but, darn it, it sure is exciting to explore.