Here's a fascinating article on why British children's stories (which tend toward fantasy) are more popular than American children's stories (which tend toward preachiness and realism). I think the reason British stories (which tend towards fantasy) are more popular than American stories (which tend towards preachiness and realism) is that deep down inside, people know that the universe isn't a soulless machine, but a place of mystery and glory and wonder.

The life of [community] has been very little regarded in American literature. Our writers have been much more concerned with the individual. . . . From Thoreau to Hemingway and his successors, a great deal of sympathy and interest has been given to the individual as pariah or gadfly or exile. In Faulkner, a community is the subject, but it is a community disintegrating, as it was doomed to do by the original sins of land greed, violent honor, and slavery. . . .

Wendell Berry, "Writer and Region," from What Are People For?