Philip Womack
Worlds Apart
The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust, Volume Two
By Philip Pullman
David Fickling Books/Penguin 704pp £20 order from our bookshop
Bearmouth
By Liz Hyder
Pushkin Children’s 320pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
Beyond Platform 13
By Sibéal Pounder & Eva Ibbotson
Macmillan Children’s 256pp £6.99 order from our bookshop
At the heart of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, which first lit up our imaginations over twenty years ago, is the exceptionally close bond between the heroine, Lyra, and her dæmon, Pantalaimon (a dæmon, for those not versed in Pullmanic lore, is an external manifestation of a human’s soul that takes animal form and has its own thoughts). Where Lyra was impulsive, Pan was there to counsel; when she was lonely, his soft fur was a comfort. For any child, having grown up clutching a soft toy or not, this was the most electric component of an extraordinary piece of work, bringing Pullman’s universe alive in a way that our own sad world of tax returns and bus stops never quite seemed to be.
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