Yes, it's true that Philip Pullman has an atheist religious outlook. Nevertheless, these books are not a manual for raising an atheist child. There is far too much rich life of the imagination in these books for them to be a simple primer for religious (or areligious) prostletizing, not to mention the presence of a depth of literary reference that appeals to a reader with an education of considerable quality.

Pullman is an artist and a scholar; these two characteristics dominate his writing. His atheism merely gave him the platform to dare certain thoughts in his storytelling. He does communicate a profound distrust for organized authority, of any kind, but especially of a religious variety. In the worlds of His Dark Materials, civil authority can imprison your body, academic authority can hobble your mind, but religious authority alone can sanctify ignorance and sever your consciousness from its unconscious twin, driving you mad, and even claim it does so for your own good.

It's also true, out of his own mouth, that he detests The Chronicles of Narnia, but he allows that this in part derives from the fact that he read them as an adult, having already experienced the bullyboy world that is English schoolboy life. (So he says. Never having been an English schoolboy, I couldn't possibly comment.) Narnia, like Harry Potter, draws on the ethos of English boarding schools.

I've had a couple of conversations with parents on the subject of His Dark Materials. To the dad who asked me if it was about atheism, I said it was less about atheism than Harry Potter is about witchcraft. I know he read all the Harry books, and he took the point. To the mom who had already begun to read the first book to her son, and was alarmed by the talk, well, I handed her a copy of Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus, and asked her if she still believed in the spirit of Christmas even if nobody came down the chimney early on a December 25th morning. I also suggested she read the rest of the books with that thought in mind, ahead of time, so she could have a conversation with her son if she saw a need, or if he did.

Pullman's fantasy contains a lot of fodder for really important conversations, conversations from which thoughtful people, believers or nonbelievers, will not shrink, and which they need not fear. As one commentator, a Catholic, put it, any child raised in a religious family who becomes an atheist after reading these books was already going there anyway. If the power of three books outweighs a child's whole life experience, something in the life experience is wanting.

Now, mind you, all four of my children are of the atheist/agnostic persuasion, like their father and me, so one could fairly say that Pullman's books hold no threat for me. I can only counter by saying that I didn't forbid my children the Bible for any reason, let alone out of fear that they would become Jews, Christians or Muslims. Their lack of religion has not inspired any of them to deny the power of that which we cannot see, hear, touch, smell or taste. They believe that power doesn't come from a deity, though. I'm pleased about this. Their life experiences have, so far, outweighed Noah's Ark, and the Sermon on the Mount doesn't need a divine Enforcer to give it value.

Most children cease to be interested in print stories for which they aren't emotionally or intellectually ready, anyway. (Their unreadiness manifests itself as boredom or confusion, which we adults would be smart to pay attention to.) It's silly and destructive to forbid contact with ideas when children are ready to encounter them. Ideas elude filters all the time. Forbidden ideas will remain in children's minds to take root in secrecy, as the children rely on their own childlike resources to ponder them. Talk brings ideas out into the light, where they can be examined, tested, and ultimately embraced or rejected freely, with adult input or even guidance.

Words are powerful, no question. The ones that are forbidden become the most powerful of all: "dark materials", indeed.