Don't be fooled. The movie The Neverending Story only covers about one-third of the novel. I was reading this aloud to my kids, and we got to the part that I remember from my hundreds of childhood viewings of the movie as being pretty much the end of the story and then the thing just kept going and going and going. Luckily my kids haven't seen the movie yet so they had no sense of the book going past the ending. 
 Overall, my kids loved this book, and I quite liked it. I was surprised at how into it they were and how much detail they retained just listening to the book. 
 I do wonder, is the religious symbolism intentional? I suppose the idea of being re-created as something new and whole isn't necessarily religious, but the way Ende goes about it seems to really lean in that direction, and I wonder if it was a C.S. Lewis-type situation, or if the religious symbolism was just coincidence. I'll probably Google it next time I want to procrastinate doing something I'm supposed to be doing.