- Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West
An International Tour of Story-Based Amusement Parks and Literary Playgrounds
When we sent out the initial call for papers for our collection that’s now titled Storybook Worlds Made Real: Essays on the Places Inspired by Children’s Narratives, we hoped that our collection would have an international scope to it. Therefore we were surprised and pleased that so many of the contributions are about places that are not related to children’s stories from the United States. These essays cover children’s literature from various countries and explore the universal impulse to play in stories.
The history of story-based amusement parks and literary playgrounds can be traced back to 1843 with the opening of Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark. Tivoli Gardens started out as a “pleasure garden’ for the residents of Copenhagen, but it gradually came to be associated with fairy tales in part because of the influence of Hans Christian Andersen. Our collection begins with Mark West’s essay about how Andersen’s fairy tales influenced the evolution of Tivoli Gardens. The essay concludes with a description of a dark ride called “The Flying Trunk,” which presents riders with a series of animated scenes depicting key moments from 32 of Andersen’s classic fairy tales.
Lucy Rollin’s essay focuses on Pinocchio Park, which is located in Tuscany, Italy. Based on Carlo Collodi’s classic novel titled Pinocchio, his park invites visitors to experience Pinocchio’s journey by wandering through a collection of metal sculptures representing characters and pivotal moments from Collodi’s tale.
Sue Matheson’s work deals with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables discusses several places on Prince Edward Island that relate to Montgomery’s classic novel. These places include the actual buildings and sites associated with the author’s life on Prince Edward Island as well places designed to encourage visitors to play in Montgomery’s story, such as the Avonlea Theme Park near the town of Cavendish.
Mark West’s chapter on Astrid Lindgren’s World in Vimmerby, Sweden, explores how this park combines play environments and children’s theater, all structured around Lindgren’s children’s books. Visitors to the park first encounter Troublemaker Street, which is tied to Lindgren’s The Children on Troublemaker Street. Another part of the park includes a recreation of Pippi Longstocking’s cottage, Villa Villekulla. The buildings in the park are miniaturized, but they are big enough for children to enter and play in the interiors of the buildings. The theatrical side of the park involves performances based on Lindgren’s stories.
Several of the essays in the collection are about places that relate to British children’s books, including Terri Toles Patkin’s chapter on A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Francesca Arnavas’s chapter on Lewis Carroll’s Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Sarah Minslow’s chapter on Beatrix Potter’s picture books, and Anna Cohn Orchard’s chapter on Roald Dahl’s various novels for children. Most of the places discussed in these essays are located in Great Britain but not all of them. For example, the essay about Alice-inspired places includes information about several such places in Japan.
The collection also includes contributions about places in the United States that are based on children’s stories from other parts of the world. For example, Kathy Merlock Jackson’s chapter is about Rock City Garden in northern Georgia. This tourist attraction celebrates European fairy tales, especially the tales from Germany. The attraction features sculptures and gardens based on fairy tales as well as its well-known Mother Goose Village.
As we state in our introduction, Storybook Worlds Made Real is about places “that draw visitors who want to play in children’s stories or experience the pleasures of immersing themselves in fictional worlds. Storybook Worlds Made Real takes readers on a tour of such places throughout the globe.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kathy Merlock Jackson is Professor of Communication at Virginia Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses in media studies and children's culture. She is the author of over a hundred articles, chapters, and reviews and has published eleven books, four of them on Disney-related topics. She is the former editor of The Journal of American Culture and past president of the Popular Culture Association.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mark I. West is the former chair of the English department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has written or edited nineteen books on children’s literature and culture and is a former president of the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA).