Book Stats (from Amazon):
Paperback: 560 pagesPublisher: Scholastic Paperbacks; 1st edition (June 1, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0439709105
ISBN-13: 978-0439709101
Amazon rating: 4.3/5 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.8/5 stars
Summary (from Amazon):
One cruel night, Meggie's father reads aloud from a book called INKHEART-- and an evil ruler escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books. Meggie must learn to harness the magic that has conjured this nightmare. For only she can change the course of the story that has changed her life forever.
This is INKHEART--a timeless tale about books, about imagination, about life. Dare to read it aloud.
I'm going to say it now; I know you guys may be a bit confused as to why I chose to review Inkheart. By no means is it a new release, or has it received a lot of attention lately. But to me, these book reviews have always been about sharing books I love, so that's what I really want to do.
I've had this book for years. I don't even really remember when I got it. I do remember reading it with my mom and bringing the final book in the trilogy, Inkdeath, to school and showing it off, because it was the thickest book anyone in my friend group at the time had read. I've had it for so long, the bookmark I use for it is a ribbon I won in a square dancing contest back in 2008 - and many of the pages are dogeared, so I'd read it at least once before I got that ribbon.
As I was reading and reminiscing about this square dancing contest (it's a long story, perhaps for another post), I came across this quote: books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else. This quote hit me like a ton of bricks - and it reminded me of why I loved this book in the first place. And really, it reminded me of why I love reading itself. And that is why this book is so powerful. I was instantly transported back nearly seven years. I could ramble on about my love of reading and the origins of that forever, if you let me, but I'll keep that story for another post.
While I wouldn't say Inkheart is strictly Young Adult, as Meggie, the protagonist and main POV character is 12 years old, so I would call it early Young Adult or upper Middle Grade, but when I picked it up again for the first time in years the other night I couldn't resist writing a review on it. It truly is a classic to me. It and its siblings Inkspell and Inkdeath have survived at least one move (perhaps two) and several rounds of what I call the "time to clear my bookshelf and put some books in a box in the storage room before the shelf collapses and crushes me" game. I don't know if I can put into words just how much I love this book, but I'll try to.
I've said it before and, quite likely, I'll say it in every blog post. Quirky, unexpected, interesting characters draw me into a story like nothing else. I've spent hour agonizing over the slightest idiosyncrasies of my characters' personalities, and I think Cornelia Funke paid careful attention to her characters personalities as well. Inkheart was one of the first books I read with such interesting and complex characters.
Mild spoilers may be ahead. Read on at your own risk!
The fire-eater Dustfinger was and still is one of my favourite characters, and while he was not the first character like this I encountered, his unpredictable and had confusing/contradictory behaviour really stood out to me, probably because I was so interested in and attached to him as a character. That is to say, he was one of the first characters I really noticed having complex motivations and working either with or against the protagonists because of these motivations. This is a type of character I use often in my own writing, and I think Dustfinger was really one of the first, and even now one of the best, examples of this type of character I've read.
The protagonist, Meggie, was one of the most relatable characters I had read, and she still is one of the characters I identify with the most. Her love of reading and her family reminded me of myself. Neither of my parents have ever disappeared into a book (at least not literally), but Meggie's relationship with her father, Mo, and how she inherits her love of books from him reminded me of my relationship with my mother. She was always the one who read out loud to me, although nothing ever came out of the books she read. My father reads quite a bit as well, although he never read out loud much (I wonder if things would come out of books if he read them... Maybe that's why...)
I could write a paragraph or more on every one of the characters in this novel and why I love them, but I doubt I could without spoiling the entire plot of the novel, and this review would end up thousands of words long if I did.
I would describe this book as suitable for someone reading at at least an upper Middle Grade level, although anyone older than that would enjoy it as well, in my opinion. It isn't a "light" read, as some of the situations and antagonists can be genuinely scary (especially for a younger reader), but it's an incredible book and one I think everyone should read. There are two other books as well, Inkspell and Inkdeath, and all of them are excellent.
5/5 stars!
