 And now, let me press once more, Jack Clearman is going to read from the Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. The Golden Compass, 1995, is the first of a trilogy by Philip Pullman called Historic Materials. He wrote these three novels, rather big, in five years. And a little that you need to know in order to understand the passage that I'm going to read is that each child when the child is born has a demon, like a personalized psyche, that when you're born is able to shape shift and change character. So sometimes the demon is a moth, it can change into a bourbon, it can change into any creature whatsoever, but in an allegory that you might recognize, as one grows older, the ability to shape shift changes until the one character that is mostly the person, you, becomes your own demon. And the heroine actually, her name is Lyra, a young girl, probably pre-team, it's hard to say exactly how old, still has a demon that is able to shape shift very quickly and she uses this to help her in her struggles because her struggles are the fact that children in Oxford, England are disappearing. No one knows why they're disappearing, but they are going away. And at some point Lyra's friend, Will, is lost too and she decides that she's going to run away and try to find him. And in the process she comes on all kinds of different creatures, and I'll just crib a little bit from the review in the Sydney morning arrow. She encounters some of the most magical creatures ever devised, and I think this is one of the reasons why I value the book so much is its imagination. Eurek, king of the armored bears, please scores be the gas balloonist astronaut. Stanislaus Grumman, the shaman, Baruch and Balthamas, the homosexual angels, Chevalier Tialis and ladies and gentlemen Salmaquia, the dragonfly riding, Gala Vespian spies, which is sort of like drones. But they're on the good side. They're also foul smelling, cliff-gosts, kidnapping goblers. Goblers are the people who steal the children. This is what the locals call whoever's doing this. They're technically called the Oblation Board, and the children don't know what that means, so of course they call them goblers. Parpe's renegade Egyptians, love them and leave them witches. A rich tapestry of characters with only one common quality. In the moral maelstrom of Pullman's multiple worlds, you're never sure who was on whose side. Except, it seems that Pullman is interested in turning the struggle in heaven between God and Satan upside down and decides that it would probably be better for the world of Satan to win the crown than God. And so this is one of the reasons why this book is banned and a major reason. Well, Lyra doesn't know what's happening to these children, and I'll just tell you what happens is their demon is cut away from them. And one of the things which they lose, of course, and this is what the church wants them to lose, is their natural impulses. And the children then disappear, they're kept in prison, and they wither away. And Lyra is now on her way to find them. And this is the moment when she discovers what has happened to the children. You're a bear, the one of the armored bears have come to a village and they're finding that there's a child there who is a lost child and he's hiding. And they speak to an old man. He says that it's not the only child of that kind, he's seen others in the forest. Sometimes they die quickly, sometimes they don't die. This one is tough, he thinks, but it would be better for him if he had died. Ask him if I can borrow his lantern, Lyra said. The bear spoke and the man handed it to her at once, not invigorously. She realized that he'd come down in order to bring it to her and thanked him. And he nodded again and stood back away from her in the hut and away from the bear. Lyra thought suddenly, what if the child is Roger? And she prayed with all her force that it wouldn't be. Pantelemon, that is her demon, is clinging to her in the shape of an ermine. His middle claws hooked deep into her anorak. She lifted the lantern high and took a step into the shed. And then she saw what it was that the oblation board was doing and what was the nature of the sacrifice the children were having to make. The little boy was huddled against the wood-drying rack where hung row upon row of gutted fish, all as stiff as boards. He was clutching a piece of fish to him as Lyra was clutching Pantelemon with her left hand hard against her heart. But that was all he had, a piece of dried fish, because he had no demon at all. The goblers had cut it away. That was indecision, and this was a severed child.