Liam Heneghan, author of Beasts at Bedtime, calls it one of the oldest stories there is: “a human ventures into the wilderness, survives, and returns to the hearth” (116).
In almost all fairy tales, and in many other children’s stories, the protagonist “ventures” away from home, usually to a wilder place, and then returns.
In these two stories, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865) and The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (1872) write about what the protagonist learns ,the ‘environmental wisdom’ they gain from their journey.
