Phillip Pullman has published nearly twenty books, mostly of the sort that are read by children, though happily the natural audience for his work seems to be a mixed one—mixed in age, that is, though the more mixed in every other way as well, the better.
His most well-known work is the trilogy His Dark Materials, beginning with Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in the USA) in 1995, continuing with The Subtle Knife in 1997, and concluding with The Amber Spyglass in 2000. These books have been honored by several prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children’s Book Award, and (for The Amber Spyglass) the Whitbread Book of the Year Award—the first time in the history of that prize that it was given to a children’s book.
