It's children's literature only in the sense that a child is the main protagonist.

but I now fail to understand why organized religion didn't join together for an ecumenical burning at the stake.

Well, they did successfully kill the movie.

The increasing anti-religious tone really soured me on the storytelling. It made me sad.

I'm not sure Pullman's anti-religious tone was any more pernicious than Lewis' Christian allegory, though.

I'm not sure Pullman's anti-religious tone was any more pernicious than Lewis' Christian allegory, though.

Yeah, that didn't ping me (in either Pullman or Lewis,) so I was kinda surprised by the reactions to them when I found 'em later. I tend to just sink into the author's mythologies when the story engages me.

I -- seriously -- didn't pick up on the Christ symbolism in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I first read it (at the age of 18).

I am sometimes dense.

I was a different age from when I read Narnia. But I found Pullman shrill and vicious, not something whose converse I remember from Lewis.

I read them all as an adult. Halfway through two, Pullman started to give me a tic. But the Narnia books rang with the sounds of anvils. Children or YAs probably wouldn't notice so much.

I didn't find Pullman's anti-religious tone too offensive. I saw it as an attack on institutions, not faith. I can relate to that.

I read the Narnia books as a child of church-going parents, and I pretty much had the symbolism pointed out to me as I read. Given my Christian background, I didn't mind that. I can imagine people of other faiths, or none, finding Lewis offensive at times.

Yeah, the Dwarves in Narnia struck as pretty obviously anti-semitic stereotypes. And I thought the whole anvil about comparing atheism to people who lived in a gaslit hole underground with pussycats and could not imagine a lion or the sun was pretty vicious.