Can a work of fiction be the victim of libel?

Factual Questions
1

I’m writing a novel, and one of the subplots involves a character’s son being given a made up book that’s obviously a thinly veiled political tale (a story about hawks, doves, and their disagreement about what to do about a predator threatening their village.) In a discussion with another character they talk about what they consider other totally inappropriate children’s books. Well known ones.

They talk about how both The Giving Tree and The Rainbow Fish send bad messages to children. The former because it presents distorted views of gender roles and the latter because it espouses the ideas that you can buy friends, that it’s not okay to be different or have more than other people, and one character claims this makes it a communist primer.

Legally speaking, is it possible to defame another work of art? Or does libel only apply to potential damage to a person’s reputation? And can an author claim that their reputation is damaged by extension if there’s an attack on their works?

2

If it were possible to defame art, every movie critic except Earl Dittman would be out of a job.

3

Ditto what friedo said. If there were anything like a cause of action based on “He made people think my fiction was crap!”, nobody would write, commission, or run reviews of anything ever.

4

Libel means to speak harmful untruths about something. Your opinion of something, no matter how impressively pursuading it may be, is still not a truth, just an opinion. So, as long as anything you say about the other books in terms of summarizing them is a factual summarization, then you’re fine.

Examples:
This book will make people want to go out and rape farm animals! - OK. Opinion.
This book contains scenes of people raping farm animals! - Bad. This did not actually occur in the book and would be libel (assuming it didn’t occur in the book.)