Saturday, July 22, 2006
book report: His Dark Materials
The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials)
by Philip Pullman
I first ran across this series of young adult novels in a sort of odd way - every so often, I get a newsletter in the mail from the English department at the university where I got my BA in English several years ago. And one of their regular features is a section where some of the professors describe a book they've read recently. Usually they're super hoity-toity and talk about some impenetrable poetry collection, or a new work of literary criticism, or an unbelievably depressing novel that is helping them to build character, or whatever. But one of the profs said he was reading this charming young adult novel that had a polar bear on the cover. So I put it on my holds list.
That was The Golden Compass. I was sucked in from the very first page, where we meet Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon (what's a daemon? you get to figure it out as you read!). Lyra lives at Oxford College, an orphan being raised by the professors. Her world is related to ours but clearly not the same... and Lyra gets caught up in a secret struggle between forces of good and evil. Evil in this case being a beautiful woman with a golden monkey daemon, who kidnaps children and does medical research on them. Lyra is brave and strong and sneaky, and totally warmed my heart as a little-girl heroine who doesn't succeed through her cuteness or her empathy for others, but through her hard-headedness and cunning.
After racing through The Golden Compass, I couldn't wait to read The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The Subtle Knife introduced Lyra's partner in adventure, a boy from our own world named Will. Together, they proceed much further down the path to figuring out the big conflict between good and evil, and make some heart-breaking discoveries about themselves, each other, and their worlds.
Then in The Amber Spyglass, the religious themes that had been developed in the first two novels come to the forefront. And many people will be offended by the anti-organized religion stance that Pullman takes. As a non-religious person myself, I was actually excited to read about an alternate view on spirtuality and morality. However, I did think the second half of this book got a little "out there" and confusing, which was disappointing after the taut and focused writing of the first two books. The ending, however, was heartrending and memorable, and tied up the story beautifully, if not happily-ever-after.
I'm so happy to find that people are still writing books that are filled with challenging ideas, magic, and difficult situations. I don't read a lot of kid's books at this point in my life, but the ones I do pick up seem to be so fluffy ("yay! you're special! life is great!") or issue-oriented ("drugs are bad" "lesbians are parents too!") or non-controversial ("let's all be nice to each other") that I wonder what kids would actually get out of reading them. I would rank this book up there with some of the British children's lit I read when I was a kid - like The Secret Garden or The Little Princess or that book about the little British girl whose parents die in a cholera epidemic in India and she has to come back to England and live with some creepy family... or is that The Little Princess? Anyway - this series was good and I look forward to my own child reading it someday.
by Philip Pullman
I first ran across this series of young adult novels in a sort of odd way - every so often, I get a newsletter in the mail from the English department at the university where I got my BA in English several years ago. And one of their regular features is a section where some of the professors describe a book they've read recently. Usually they're super hoity-toity and talk about some impenetrable poetry collection, or a new work of literary criticism, or an unbelievably depressing novel that is helping them to build character, or whatever. But one of the profs said he was reading this charming young adult novel that had a polar bear on the cover. So I put it on my holds list.
That was The Golden Compass. I was sucked in from the very first page, where we meet Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon (what's a daemon? you get to figure it out as you read!). Lyra lives at Oxford College, an orphan being raised by the professors. Her world is related to ours but clearly not the same... and Lyra gets caught up in a secret struggle between forces of good and evil. Evil in this case being a beautiful woman with a golden monkey daemon, who kidnaps children and does medical research on them. Lyra is brave and strong and sneaky, and totally warmed my heart as a little-girl heroine who doesn't succeed through her cuteness or her empathy for others, but through her hard-headedness and cunning.
After racing through The Golden Compass, I couldn't wait to read The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The Subtle Knife introduced Lyra's partner in adventure, a boy from our own world named Will. Together, they proceed much further down the path to figuring out the big conflict between good and evil, and make some heart-breaking discoveries about themselves, each other, and their worlds.
Then in The Amber Spyglass, the religious themes that had been developed in the first two novels come to the forefront. And many people will be offended by the anti-organized religion stance that Pullman takes. As a non-religious person myself, I was actually excited to read about an alternate view on spirtuality and morality. However, I did think the second half of this book got a little "out there" and confusing, which was disappointing after the taut and focused writing of the first two books. The ending, however, was heartrending and memorable, and tied up the story beautifully, if not happily-ever-after.
I'm so happy to find that people are still writing books that are filled with challenging ideas, magic, and difficult situations. I don't read a lot of kid's books at this point in my life, but the ones I do pick up seem to be so fluffy ("yay! you're special! life is great!") or issue-oriented ("drugs are bad" "lesbians are parents too!") or non-controversial ("let's all be nice to each other") that I wonder what kids would actually get out of reading them. I would rank this book up there with some of the British children's lit I read when I was a kid - like The Secret Garden or The Little Princess or that book about the little British girl whose parents die in a cholera epidemic in India and she has to come back to England and live with some creepy family... or is that The Little Princess? Anyway - this series was good and I look forward to my own child reading it someday.
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It's 'The Secret Garden' by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The orphan in question is Mary Craven who goes to stay with her uncle and, as she finds out later, her cousin Colin.
'The Little Princess' is by the same author. She's not an orphan, but she thinks she is. Her father has gone missing, and the headmistress of the school she's attending keeps her as a servant.
I hope that clarifies everything.
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'The Little Princess' is by the same author. She's not an orphan, but she thinks she is. Her father has gone missing, and the headmistress of the school she's attending keeps her as a servant.
I hope that clarifies everything.
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