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Imaginary Maps in Literature and Beyond: Children’s Stories

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This blog post is part of a summer series on imaginary maps, written by Hannah Stahl, a Library Technician in the Geography & Map Division. Read the introductory post to the series here.

Our journey into imaginary worlds continues this week with maps of imaginary places that are related to children’s literature. My first exposure to maps came in the map found in the pages of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. For you it could have been Tolkien’s The Hobbit or L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Maybe others heard mention of the Marauder’s Map in Harry Potter, or were exposed to a map like the “Anciente Mappe of Fairyland,” which encompasses characters from fairy tales in one imaginary place.

Anciente Mappe of Fairyland
“Anciente Mappe of Fairyland” by Bernard Sleigh. 1920. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.
Anciente Mappe of Fairyland Detail
Detail from “Anciente Mappe of Fairyland” by Bernard Sleigh. 1920. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

As mentioned before, authors who choose to include maps in their works engage in world-building by laying out the geography of the places their characters inhabit. This has a unique power in children’s literature because it primes kids to learn geography with maps of real places later on in life. However, maps of real places are not always reliable. For example, map projections can distort the sizes of countries, leading to an unfaithful representation of how the world really looks. Additionally, charting with insufficient information can lead to wildly inaccurate maps, such as during the Age of Discovery when many explorers believed California was an island separated from the mainland of North America. What about maps in children’s books? Are they always reliable?

Map of California Shown as an Island by Joan Vinckeboons. ca. 1650. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.
Map of California Shown as an Island by Joan Vinckeboons. ca. 1650. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.
Detail from In the Land of Winnie the Pooh." Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
Detail from “In the Land of Winnie the Pooh.” Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Take, for example, the map of the Hundred Acre Woods that accompanies A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. The bottom of the map gives us information about its author, “Drawn By Me And Mr Shepard Helpd.” The “me” is meant to signify that it was drawn by Christopher Robin, a child. This allows children to trust that the information given by Christopher Robin is true because a peer wrote it. The various misspellings of place names on the map also add a sense of verisimilitude to the map. The illustrations are even childlike. They are not as precise as the illustrations in the map of Fairyland, for example. The map in Winnie-the-Pooh is reliable in the sense that it allows children to trust the information being presented to them, making it easier for them to suspend their disbelief and lose themselves in the story. Adults reading Winnie-the-Pooh to their children, however, see the misspellings for what they are: part of a child’s imagination and not to be trusted. The map of the Hundred Acre Wood is actually a map of the adventures of a child and his toys in Ashdown Forest in England, a real place. It represents simultaneously the wonder of a child’s imagination and the heartbreak of growing up.

Another famous map in children’s literature that raises the question of the trustworthiness is the Marauder’s Map in the Harry Potter series. While J.K. Rowling declines to provide an illustration in the books themselves, she obliges in providing an illustration on her website Pottermore