Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Inkheart the movie was just released January 23rd. The movie stars Brendan Fraser, Eliza Bennett, Paul Bettany, and Helen Mirren. It was one of the top 10 films for its opening weekend, grossing $3.7 million. Did you know that the film is based on several popular fantasy books?
Inkheart, written by Cornelia Funke, is a book that initially focuses on a mystery: why won’t Meggie’s father read to her aloud anymore? Meggie, a 13-year old young girl developed her love of books based on her father’s influence. She remembers him reading aloud to her when she was a baby, but can’t understand why her abruptly father stopped this practice. Turns out Mo, Meggie’s father, is a Silvertongue, someone that can bring book characters to life just by reading about them aloud. Mo no longer reads to Meggie because when she was 3-years old he read from a book called Inkheart and mistakenly released several villainous characters on Earth: Capricorn, an evil killer, his servant Basta, and Dustfinger, a fire eater. In their place Meggie’s mother Teresa was sent into the book world, a place called Inkworld.
Dustfinger tells Mo that the evil Capricorn has sent his henchmen into the world to look for him. Mo has been running from Capricorn for years and decides that it’s best to take Meggie to live with her great aunt Elinor in Italy. Dustfinger decides to travel with them.
Speaking of Capricorn, he’s a sadistic man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing others. He’s said to have “fed a bird to a cat on purpose, just to watch it being torn apart.” He’s recruited several henchmen to locate and capture Mo so he can force him to read a murderous creature to life and wreak havoc on his enemies.
When Capricorn finds out that Mo has a daughter he decides to find and capture her in order to use her as a pawn in his plans to have Mo read the evil creature to life. This places Meggie firmly in the middle of a story of intrigue, suspense, and danger.
Capricorn is also looking for the person responsible for writing Inkheart so he can make him write a new and evil ending to the Inkheart story. In the meantime, Mo has spent years looking for a copy of Inkheart hoping that by reading it aloud a second time, he can send Capricorn and his henchmen back into Inkworld. He decides that finding the author of Inkheart is the best way to get rid of Capricorn - he’ll have the author write a story that removes Capricorn from the human world.
Cornelia Funke stated that Brendan Fraser was her inspiration when she wrote Inkheart. As such she adamantly insisted that the director cast him as Mo in the film. The studio wanted a bigger star for the role but Cornelia eventually prevailed. There’s talk of making the second book in the trilogy, Inkspell, into a film as well but a release date hasn’t been determined yet.
Inkheart is an easy read that has developed a following amongst both adults and teens. Although book sales and box office revenues don’t come close to those of Harry Potter it’s still a fast paced, somewhat funny, entirely magical book worth reading.
