Or broader... many children's stories have an escape into a secret world which is not accessible by adults or their acquaintances, this could occur just at night (probably at midnight) or in a wardrobe, or via a tollbooth or down a rabbit hole or by being blown to another land by a twister. Normally the child is unhappy and is facing mundane but (seemingly) insurmountable problems in the real world, then they go to the magic land and face potentially much more serious and life-threatening issues that, with the help of their new friends and possibly some mixture of favourable sorcery and destiny they overcome. And ultimately they go back to the drab real world, where, they are suddenly able to defeat their real-world foes with the skills they learned in the fairy-tale land.
I used to love those sorts of stories as kids. I think I would go to say that nothing in my adult life ever has or will give me as much pleasure as some of the sheer mindblowing excitement I got from the Neverending Story or The Enchanted Castle or whatever. Although having your knob sucked while smoking heroin is pretty good.