Al Roker’s Today book club returns from months of dormancy to promote a book that perhaps needs no promotion: Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, the first of the His Dark Materials trilogy. The book has all the trappings of a children’s fantasy novel: orphaned English child; ambiguously ominous uncle; giant animal ally, and so on.

The book’s protagonist is Lyra Belacqua, whose pleasantly unfettered life is shattered by the arrival of her uncle, Lord Asriel, who talks crazy talk of a natural phenomenon called “Dust”, and the outlines of a city in the Aurora Borealis that he has surmised is part of an alternative universe. Meanwhile, children have begun to disappear, the victims of “Gobblers”, a bizarre race that uses the kids for terrible experiments. When Lyra’s playmate Roger goes missing, Lyra runs away to find him, heading North into a dangerous land where she’ll meet up with mercenary polar bears, a vagabond troop of gyptians (gypsies), witches and a Texan in a hot air balloon.

Somehow, her uncle is involved.

Sound like your cup of tea? Read the excerpt, and don’t forget to watch the trailer for a movie adaptation staring Nicole Kidman and that hottie Daniel Craig.