Yes, The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials) Is Banned!

Philip Pullman’s 1995 novel (published in the UK as Northern Lights) introduces Lyra Belacqua, an orphan living in a parallel-universe Oxford where people’s souls exist outside their bodies as animal companions called dæmons. Lyra’s quest to rescue kidnapped children leads her into conflict with the Magisterium, a powerful religious authority. The book is the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy, which draws on Milton’s Paradise Lost and, in its later volumes, explicitly challenges organized religion. The trilogy has sold over 17.5 million copies worldwide.

In 2007, the Catholic League launched an organized campaign against the film adaptation, calling the books “atheism for kids.” The campaign triggered a wave of school challenges across America. The ALA received 420 formal complaints that year, making it the 4th most challenged book. Schools in Winchester, Kentucky challenged it because a character supposedly “drinks wine and eats poppy.” In Skaneateles, New York and Carroll ISD, Texas, the books were pulled or restricted after being described as “anti-God, anti-Catholic, and anti-religion.” Pullman was characteristically unbothered, telling The Guardian he was “delighted” by the controversy.

Why You Should Read This

Pullman wrote a children’s book that takes theology seriously enough to argue with it. The Magisterium in His Dark Materials is authoritarian and cruel, and Pullman based it on real institutional abuses. The Catholic League’s campaign proved his point more efficiently than anything he could have written.

Lyra is one of the best characters in modern children’s fiction: brave, dishonest, scrappy, and fiercely loyal. She lies constantly and for good reasons. She’s nobody’s idea of a role model, and she’s exactly the kind of protagonist kids love. The world Pullman built, with its armored bears, witch clans, and Dust, is as rich as anything Tolkien imagined, and more dangerous.

The controversy always centers on the later books, where Pullman’s critique of organized religion becomes explicit. But The Golden Compass works even without the rest of the trilogy. It’s a propulsive adventure novel about a girl who won’t do what she’s told. The fact that some adults want to stop children from reading about a child who disobeys authority is, at this point, a well-worn irony.