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The release of the film version of The Golden Compass, the first part of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy, is sure to give Geneva families a ‘must see’ date for the Christmas period.

For years, I have used the text with junior secondary school English classes and they love it! (Though I prefer the English title Northern Lights – it is so much more evocative for anyone who has lived within the range of that remarkable phenomenon, but, as with Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the American title carries the day.)

"Can they cope with the complexity of it?" you ask. As in any secondary class, some would be discussing the third part of the trilogy with their able friends while others struggled with the long words of chapter five.

That is my point. The story is so gripping that even poor readers found it worth their while to take on the challenge. Few young teenagers could resist the excitment of Lyra’s mission to rescue children who were being forcibly separated from their soulmate or daemon.

Forty years of English teaching have left me convinced that reading is the key to success. If your child reads, the rest will come by itself. At any parent-teacher meeting, several parents would inevitably ask, "How do I get them to read?" A difficult one with a lot of answers, but taking them to a stirring film is certainly one way.

What about the polemics surrounding the religious implications of Pullman’s plot? Frankly I don’t think this is relevant. Lyra represents straight-thinking humanitarian values that we hope to encourage. It is Lyra who interests the young reader, not the struggles with the Magisterium. Wide and balanced reading will resolve any problems about the agenda of Pullman’s text.

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