Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
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Audience: 9 and up
Rating: B
Synopsis:
Meggie’s father, Mortimer, has a powerful reading voice. So powerful, in fact, that when he reads aloud the characters climb right off the pages. But some of the characters he’s conjured aren’t peaceful, and they aren’t satisfied with what he’s done. Meggie, Mo and many others are dragged on adventure after adventure as they try to escape capture from Capricorn and his clan of evil henchmen who want Mo to read aloud and summon the scariest villain of all.
Chatter:
(Spoiler Alerts! ) My main complaint about this book was that it was simply too long. I liked the plot and I liked the characters, but there were times that the story just seemed to drag on. I think part of this was the reader knew so much more about the plot than the characters, so at times I wanted to say “all right already, when’s Mo going to learn that his wife is in this world?” Or, “seriously, how long is Fenoglio going to wait before telling Meggie that he can write a new ending?”
I probably will read the sequels, but I don’t think I’ll rush right out to buy them. I’m curious about what happened to Fenoglio, but I really don’t care about Dustfinger. He irritates me! I was upset that Farid chose to follow Dustfinger instead of staying with Mo and Meggie. They care about him and would have taken care of him – Dustfinger will not!
The ending did surprise me a bit. I would think that after seeing how damaging it can be to read characters out of stories, Meggie would want nothing to do with this. Instead, she decides that she wants to be an author, so that she can try and control the lives of the characters she brings to live on paper (and then reads into the world). Didn’t she learn from the experience with the Shadow that you can’t control the characters or predict how they will react? This would be the part I’d like to read about in the sequels… to see if Meggie ends up learning this lesson after all.
Questions:
What books would you put in your book box?
What book would you ask Mo or Meggie to read aloud? Why?
Why do you think Dustfinger, Basta and Mortola remained behind?
What will the fairies and magical creatures do in this world?
Keep reading!
-Paige
