Today is the birthday 405th birthday of the poet John Milton, who wrote the line “His dark materials to create more worlds” in Book II of Paradise Lost, the great work from which Philip Pullman took his inspiration and his title in writing the His Dark Materials trilogy.

Reportedly, Pullman was attempting to write a version of Paradise Lost that would be accessible to teenagers. Whether he managed such a feat is debatable, but the results were good enough to be our Book of Today.

– Michael Moats