Inkheart

I just bought Inkspell by Cornelia Funke and can't wait to get to it. For all our groupies out there, the homestead is getting the master shower replaced so Handsome Hunk thinks that I should be caulking and taping wallboard instead of making a nest of pillows and reading until 2:00 am. (I'm the one that pushed us to replace the shower so this is a just punishment.) Inkspell is the sequel to Inkheart which is a book that has got rave reviews and I can only add my raves to theirs. I first encountered Cornelia Funke when The Thief Lord was published in the USA in 2002. Cornelia Funke was already a bestselling children's author in Germany and The Thief Lord was her first english publication. I wasn't that captivated by The Thief Lord. I thought that if Funke sold more childrens books in Germany than any any other author except J.K. Rollings and R.L. Stine then Germany must have pretty poor pickens for their larvel units to read. Inkheart won me over.

I realalized that I needed to reread Inkheart so I could be in the proper frame of mind for the "rest of the story". I loved the intensity of this book. It's a gripping - can't put it down read but it's also a love poem to reading. Each chapter starts with a quote from a well known book. The main charactor is a twelve year old girl named Meggie who loves books. Her single father whom she has always called by his name, Mo, repairs and rebinds old and sometimes valuable books. When Meggie discovers a sinister man, Dustfinger, outside their home her father packs their van and flees to a book collecting crazed aunt's home in Italy (all the actioin takes place in Europe, mostly in Italy). Meggie's father is abducted from the aunts home by an unknown gang and she and her aunt must find a way to rescue him.

What they will find is that Mo has a powerful talent. What he reads out loud comes to life. He has "read" into existence a villan that wants to dominate our world and needs Mo's unusual reading abilities to accomplish it. Meggie must find a way to save her father, find what happened to her mother and keep herself alive.

Funke writes in a style called "magical realism", where real magic occurs to everyday people. She is also an author that never dumbs down things for children. Everything, especially magic, has consequences. Imagine that you, like Mo, could "read" things into life. With all the literature in the world available what, if anything, would you read out loud? Funke was a social worker in Germany before becoming a full time author and I think that is why she knows that the world is not always a safe and happy place but she writes hopeful and positive stories without resorting to emotional manipulation.

The craving to get to Inkspell has just gotten worse. I've found out that this is a trilogy! Inkdeath is the name of the third book and since her books are translated into english - IT's ALREADY IN PRINT IN GERMANY. There is also a movie version of Inkheart that looks like it will come out at the end 2008.

By the way, Cornelia Funke pronounces her name FOONK-eh. Various bios say that she now lives at least part of the time in Los Angeles and she likes how American children pronounce her name (we tend to pronounce it FUNKY).