The Church of Matches,

[kalidascopeeyes]

Anointing ignorance with gasoline.

The Golden Compass pulled from Calgary Catholic school's Library

Comments

What is this 'reading' you speak of, Citizen?

[bramblekite]

Parents should read to and with their children?!? Talk to them? Teach them morality instead of beating it into them? What kind of communist ARE you, anyway?

Everyone knows that children learn everything they need to know from TV and XBox.

Reading leads to thinking. Thinking leads to premarital sex and Satanism. We can't have that.

[schnookiemuffin]

I'll bring those books by around noon. I won't be able to stay because I've got a con call at 1pm today.

[kalidascopeeyes]

kk see you then!

[shirokumavidar]

I agree wholeheartedly. I just started the 2nd book myself and Elizabeth finished all 3 last week.

[7n7]

I read these books after I saw a trailer for the movie and really did not enjoy them. Things picked up a bit as the series went on, but they were really pretty boring. If I have to force myself to finish the series, I am surprised that kids aparently like it.

I do not agree with censoring books, but it is kind of skeevy that the author admits that he wrote the books to turn people against organized religion when they are targeted at children. Good parenting trumps everything, but it seems a bit distastful.

[moogielion]

I enjoyed the books (mostly just the first one) but I found them offensively age-inappropriate. The extremely negative views against the church verge on propaganda when placed in a fictional children's book. I'm not talking about a balanced viewpoint, but a very one-sided look. Do kids this age really have the philosophical and historical context to frame these ideas

[yonihamagid]

I've not read the books, but from the descriptions I've seen, the books are not critical of the Catholic Church, but openly hostile. I can certainly understand a Catholic school choosing not to put it in their library.

[kalidascopeeyes]

Perhaps I am it remembering differently. In the first book, the one they are removing from the library (for review, they have not chosen to ban it yet). The main character is a young girl living in a monastery, with monks. The monks, at the time of reading struck me as old guys that were sorta superstitious. I never saw anything that I would consider hostile. But I did read the book several years ago, and may be misremembering things.

[yonihamagid]

The specific things I've heard is that the bad guys of the series are the hierarchy of the church.