The Neverending Story

Ende published Die unendliche Geschichte in 1979, and Ralph Manheim’s English translation appeared in 1983. Bastian, a boy dealing with his mother’s death, steals a book from a bookshop and reads it in his school attic. It tells of the land of Fantastica, threatened by a formless Nothing, and of the young warrior Atreyu’s quest to save the Childlike Empress. Barrera loved it as a child for showing how language creates realities.