“There
are so many magical places in books that you can't go to, like Hogwarts and
Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually
go.” – Cornelia Funke
A German author of young adult
fiction, Funke (pronounced Foon-ka) was born on this day in 1958 and is perhaps
best known for her Inkheart trilogy, published in 2004–2008. The books
chronicle the adventures of teen Meggie Folchart whose life changes
dramatically when she realizes that she and her father, a bookbinder named Mo,
have the unusual ability to bring characters from books into the real world
when reading aloud.
Mostly set in Northern Italy and its
parallel world of the fictional Inkheart, the central story's arc concerns the magic of books, their characters and creatures – and the art of reading.
An avid reader herself, beginning
during her “growing up years in northern Germany," she said she always wanted to
be either an astronaut or a pilot but then gravitated toward social work and working with children.
And that, she said, led to her writing for kids.
As for her ideas, she said
"they come from everywhere and nowhere, from outside and inside. I have so
many, I won't be able to write them down in one lifetime." As for her characters, Cornelia said,
"Mostly they step into my writing room and are so much alive, that I ask
myself, where did they come from?”
A worldwide advocate for strong
libraries, she said she encourages every child and every aspiring young writer
to “Read – and be curious. If I was a book, I would like to be a library
book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids,” she said. “A library book, I imagine, is a very happy
book.”
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