Pullman Unfazed by Flap over ‘The Golden Compass’

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SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 12/11/2007 2:10:00 PM

So what kind of a guy is Philip Pullman, exactly? Pullman has been in the news lately as author of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy (Knopf). The Golden Compass, the just-released cinematic version of the trilogy's first book, has stirred up controversy after the United States-based Catholic League urged a boycott of the film. The League wasn't alone: Britain's Association of Christian teachers blasted the movie, and a Catholic school district in Canada removed the trilogy from its libraries. Even the British newspaper The Mail labeled Pullman "the most dangerous author in Britain."

The source of the criticism? Pullman's supposed "anti-Christian"—some call it "atheist"—content. Critics have worried that children who see The Golden Compass—despite the film's lack of religious elements—will rush off to read Pullman's more religious-specific trilogy, which includes The Golden Compass (1996), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000, all Knopf).

The controversy apparently doesn't faze Pullman. In a December 3 interview with the British author at his farmhouse near Oxford, Intelligent Life magazine quotes the author as saying that people should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. "They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence," Pullman told writer Robert Butler. "It's very hard to disagree with those,” Pullman added. “But they will."