Shawn Hainsworth's favorite portal stories that take fantasy worlds to new heights

This book is very sophisticated in terms of how it uses the fantasy world.

In the real world, Max’s emotions are controlling him, but in the fantasy world, he is in control of the wild things, and by extension, his emotions. The story perfectly captures what it is like to be overwhelmed by your emotions, but also to find a way to master them, so that when he returns to the real world, he is calm, and finds his supper waiting for him—and it is still hot.

Sendak’s art, and the story, are so appealing, and what kid doesn’t want to be the king of the wild things? It is brilliant and can be appreciated on many different levels.

For those who are not familiar with the great Winsor McKay, you have a treat waiting for you.

McKay was one of the great comic strip illustrators of the early twentieth century, and a big influence on Maurice Sendak, particularly Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. The Little Nemo strip ran in the New York Herald from 1905 to 1911. Every night, Little Nemo travels to a fantasy world, returning to his bed in the morning.

The scope of McKay’s imagination and his utterly unique and immersive art style make this strip the high-water mark of both writing and illustration.

This is utterly unique in the way Norton Juster is able to build a fantasy world out of words, logic, and math.

As a young adult, I loved the idea of receiving a magic tollbooth and driving into a magic world. But, immediately, I found the book challenging because Milo ends up in the doldrums (a word I had never heard before). This is not just a fantasy adventure, but a cautionary tale, a character study, and a world full of puns and puzzles.

Returning to the book as an adult, I was amazed at how seamlessly Juster puts it all together.

This is a dark portal fantasy I discovered in high school.

The setup is utterly unique, featuring a protagonist who is a leper in the real world and a reluctant anti-hero in the fantasy realm. Stephen R. Donaldson builds an intricately detailed world, both beautiful and treacherous, populated by original and complex characters.

It is a morally ambiguous series with psychological depth, which creates a stark contrast between the Covenant’s identity across the two worlds.

My favorite novel, and I think one of the greatest leaps of imagination in literature.

It is not technically a portal story because Don Quixote does not travel to another world. Instead, he travels through another world created by his imagination. The brilliance is in the balancing act of spinning adventure after adventure while continuing to extend the meta-narrative, stories within stories.

In part two, Don Quixote reads and comments on Cervantes's rendering of his adventures in part one. On top of this, the author layers in social and literary commentary and humor. Despite being written over four hundred years ago, this book makes me laugh out loud over and over again.