People can lead many lives. Each microcosm of their hopes, their dreams, and their plans, are all too often subverted in realities that all can see, but I think that the human mind is too complex to be limited to what we merely see. We use dreams and daydreams to fill all the little corners of unused space, and to create a refuge where we keep a few important parts of ourselves.

Often it’s cathartic. The stories where we are suddenly as pretty as we’ve always wanted to be, or where we reorder the scope of lives to resolve the problems of guilt, lack of promise, and entitlement, to change those things that we see as the barriers between our real lives, and the greener places in these little corners that buoy us up.

They are ubiquitous. People use them for everything from escapism, to a way to plan complex tasks by envisioning them more fully before taking action. Some don’t believe it, because their own little corners are closer to the every day life, like sports, or cars, or money. However, although it is manifestly not a phenomenon to be claimed by any one group, being an offshoot of logical thought and problem solving, there are still those who need it more than others it seems.

Like me.

I have ridden in the moonlight on a dragon’s wings, and stood shoulder to shoulder with earthly kings. I’ve built clever devices, some real and others less so, all while driving starships beyond the limits of wonder. As for warm tropical beaches, and the hours spent in expressing love to one another, I know every grain of sand. When there is no good book in easy reach, or a well written newspaper on a convenient stand; my imagination is always ready to fill those times – starting always in those little corner places that I keep readily at hand.

I only wish I could share all places I’ve been., but then again the stories in themselves are less important. All satisfy the needs that drive us. The actual destinations are testaments to diversity, just as the journey’s a monument to humanity. I continue to read these stories because every new situation is a destination where I sojourn, and every new path a revelation of a new way by which I can appreciate the needs and the wishes in me. The desire to do so my wax and wane, but it is always there, amid all the cares, these other lives that speak to me.

I’d have told her it’s because I have an all too human heart, and because I can dare to dream.

Sarah Lynn Morgan.

Coincidentally, just a couple of days ago I read this:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secrets-of-storytelling

In particular, I think this passage applies:

But the best stories—those retold through generations and translated into other languages—do more than simply present a believable picture. These tales captivate their audience, whose emotions can be inextricably tied to those of the story’s characters. Such immersion is a state psychologists call “narrative transport.”

Researchers have only begun teasing out the relations among the variables that can initiate narrative transport. A 2004 study by psychologist Melanie C. Green, now at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, showed that prior knowledge and life experience affected the immersive experience. Volunteers read a short story about a gay man attending his college fraternity’s reunion. Those who had friends or family members who were homosexual reported higher transportation, and they also perceived the story events, settings and characters to be more realistic. Transportation was also deeper for participants with past experiences in fraternities or sororities. “Familiarity helps, and a character to identify with helps,” Green explains.

Also this:

“If you’re training to be a pilot, you spend time in a flight simulator,” says Keith Oatley, a professor of applied cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto. Preliminary research by Oatley and Mar suggests that stories may act as “flight simulators” for social life. A 2006 study hinted at a connection between the enjoyment of stories and better social abilities. The researchers used both self-report and assessment tests to determine social ability and empathy among 94 students, whom they also surveyed for name recognition of authors who wrote narrative fiction and nonnarrative nonfiction. They found that students who had had more exposure to fiction tended to perform better on social ability and empathy tests. Although the results are provocative, the authors caution that the study did not probe cause and effect—exposure to stories may hone social skills as the researchers suspect, but perhaps socially inclined individuals simply seek out more narrative fiction.

All in all, I think you intuitively grasped and explained what these researchers have spent their careers figuring out.

If you have a TG child, like we do, it is extremely difficult to find any books that have any relevance to them. In children's literature boys are boys and girls are girls. One occasionally comes across a spot of cross-dressing as, for example, in Enid Blyton's Circus of Adventure, (published in the fifties) Anne Fine's Bill's New Frock (published in the nineties) and the more recently published Boy 2 Girl by Terence Blacker. But apart from those, and Twice Upon A Time, (mentioned by Angharad in Totally Insane) I've never come across any others that have much relevance to my daughter.

So that is why I started looking for suitable stories for her on the Internet, and here I have found stories that are suitable for her written by Kaleigh Way, Angharad, Gabi and some others. I download them and print them out so that we can read them together at bedtime n our special read and cuddle time. Even though she is 13, she still loves to be read to, and so do I so we take it in turns.

We both say "Thank Goodness for Top Shelf." It has saved our bacon.

Hugs,
Hilary