beyond the boundaries of fantasia

i believe my love for fiction literature has been mentioned before. even as i was a child, i adored stories about distant lands or times, stories about the unknown, unexpected, unimagined. one of the first such books i read myself was ende's neverending story, a story of young bastian's travel to a parallel universe inside of a book. i especially liked the collision of reality and fiction, similar to the one in sophie's world.. a movie adaptation of the neverending story has also been released in 1984, and i liked it just as much as the book.
i also think that the story has a great moral. when all in his life is falling apart, bastian has to save his fantasy world using imagination and a 'dangerous' book he finds in the library, and that, i think, is escapism at its finest.