Inkheart: our movie-book club

Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke
New York : Scholastic, 2003.
Random House/Listening Library, p2003.
ages 9 - 12
Berkeley Public Library or Oakland Public Library

We just had our first movie-book club at school with this book. The kids loved the book, and are ready to start (or have already started on) the sequel. The overall plot was filled with action and suspense; it appealed to boys and girls. Meggie's father has a special talent for reading characters right out of books, but it turns out to be a double-edged sword as he reads out a nasty villain. The adventure is good, and the heroine is plucky. The beginning is a little slow to get into, but once Meggie, Mo and Elinor are captured by Capricorn, we were all hooked. But be warned: it's quite a long book (over 500 pages).

"Oh, the book is soooo much better than the movie! They changed so much!" Words to make a book-lover smile! The kids were disappointed that the movie changed the plot around so much. Many, many aspects of the plot were changed. I felt that in the movie you didn't get to know and care about the characters the same way as in the book. But I did like the visual details of Dustfinger breathing fire. It was especially interesting how the movie didn't leave the same room for a sequel, the way the book does. Check out the movie trailer

The audio version of Inkheart is fantastic. It totally hooked our 4th graders. In fact, several of them listened to all 13 hours of the story in one week! Here's a taste of the audio version of Inkheart:


The audio of Inkspell, the second in the series, is narrated by Brendan Fraser, the star of the movie. In fact, Cornelia Funke told Brendan Fraser that he was the inspiration for Mo. Want to taste the audio version of Inkspell?