Crossover as I understand it, is the term used to describe literature which is suitable for two constituencies, and specifically to describe books accessible to both adults and children. The phenomenon which currently best fits this term is J K Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, but such literature has been around for a long time. The Winnie the Pooh books by A A Milne should be in everybody’s top ten humorous books: Eeyore is one of the great comic characters in English literature. Much of the humour escapes children but surely this is the whole point of crossover literature: it can be (apparently) completely enjoyed from two wholly different perspectives.

A good example of an allegedly crossover book which is nothing of the sort is Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. This is a work of genius, a satire on the human condition which on publication was immediately abridged and bowdlerized, the episode of Gulliver and the Lilliputians extracted, and, out of context, totally misrepresented. This is a book for adults, and its presentation to children (because how could they possibly be aware of the political satire), is simply traducing the intentions of the author.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written by the Oxford mathematical don, the Reverent Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), is, on the other hand, a masterpiece whose metaphysical conceits appeal on many different intellectual levels. Peter Pan and Wendy by J M Barrie is, in post modern understanding, also an extremely interesting crossover work in that, although apparently a story straight forwardly written for children the reasons for writing it and the style in which it is written were profoundly affected by events in Barrie’s troubled life. If possible, Peter Pan and Wendy should be read (aloud) to one’s children while simultaneously reading (silently) to oneself the captivating story of J M Barrie and The Lost Boys by Andrew Birkin.

Other children’s classical literature such as Aesop’s Fables and Grimm’s and Hans Anderson’s fairy tales could be considered as crossover literature in that these mythical tales connect at a profound level to the oral tradition through which early societies transmitted traditions and values. However, I thought these books were rubbish when I was young and I have never seen any reason to revisit that opinion, nor did I inflict them on my children. Tolkien I cannot comment as I have never been able to become enthused by the antics of the denizens of Middle Earth; in any event, Tolkien always denied that his tales had any symbolic or allegorical significance, so maybe they aren’t crossover literature at all. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is an astonishing achievement, a multi-layered masterpiece of amazing narrative pace and drive. His Dark Materials is a quotation from Book II of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Pullman’s trilogy also deals with creation and the fall of man, describing an epic struggle between good and evil, between love and hatred. The books, published separately in paperback, but now also available in a one volume hardback, have the familiar elements of fantasy adventure novels, juvenile heroes undergoing heroic trials, but in addition they explore some very big ideas: where do we come from? Where do we go? What is our purpose? How should we conduct our lives?

Pullman’s most celebrated invention is introduced in the fourth word of the first sentence of the first book. It is the daemon an animal form which is the outward manifestation of our inner lives. Daemons become an integral part of the characterisation and the plotlines of the books: children’s daemons change with their mood, sometimes transforming in a short period of time in response to the child’s emotional distress; adults’ daemons are fixed animal forms, reflecting the dominant aspect of the adult’s personality. Pullman writes his books in longhand and revealed in a conversation with Richard Holloway at the Edinburgh International Book Festival that he wrote seventeen drafts of the first volume before publication. It seems inconceivable that it was only in the fourteenth draft that the concept of the daemon occurred to him and was incorporated into the trilogy.

The daemon could be described as a sort of externalisation of the soul. But mention of the soul in relation to these books is extremely problematic because, unusually (possibly uniquely?) in children’s literature, the dark, sinister, malevolent forces against which the children struggle are the forces of institutional religion. There is profound and widespread anticlericalism in these books which caused the Catholic Herald to denounce them as truly the stuff of nightmares Ö.. worthy of the bonfire. I suppose this represents progress of a sort, since the call was not to deposit Pullman on the bonfire, merely his books. Pullman, himself an atheist, is profoundly sceptical of the Christian allegorical world of Narnia created by C S Lewis whom he accuses of misogyny, racism and a sado ñ masochistic relish for violence.

In this trilogy, Philip Pullman creates a series of parallel universes, some doomed and dysfunctional, some aspiring to goodness and nobility and in this multiverse he explores and contrasts innocence and experience, humanitarian attitudes and religious bigotry , cruelty and hypocrisy. He does all this in storylines of fantastic pace and power set in fabulous landscapes peopled by gipsies, witches, armoured bears, angels, tiny spies who travel on the back of dragonflies, and many, many more. In the USA, the trilogy is marketed for adults, in the UK it is directed at children of twelve and over. I defy anyone not to enjoy it.

On Desert Island Discs, Pullman’s book choice was Marcel Proust’s A la Recherchedu Temps Perdu in all seven volumes. I have a fine Folio Society edition in the famous translation of C K Scott Moncrieff, but I have not yet got round to reading it. However, if it is good enough for Philip Pullman, it is good enough for me, and I look forward to reviewing it for the Hoolet in probably around 2010.