Dare to read aloud….

Inkheart Cornelia Funke
543 pages; published 2003

So Mo began filling the silence with words. He lured them out of the pages as if they had only been waiting for his voice, words long and short, words sharp and soft, cooing, purring words. They danced through the room, painting stained-glass pictures, tickling the skin. (252)

There are books, and then there are books for booklovers. Inkheart definitely falls into the second category.

Twelve year old Meggie Folchart inherited her love of reading from her father Mo (Mortimer), a dedicated bookbinder. Everything about their lives together revolves around their shared passion: reading books, talking about books, collecting books…

Until the day a strange man, with an even stranger name (Dustfinger) turns up and disrupts Meggie’s understanding of the world. Suddenly books aren’t quite as safe as they used to be, her father is not the simple man he always seemed, and villains are no longer limited to the page.

I hate the idea of seeing a movie based on a book BEFORE actually reading the book, so I’ll admit that I bought this book before I really knew what it was about – just that it was had a pretty cover and was something about books… luckily it all worked out well.

Inkheart was a very enjoyable read, a real adventure story for booklovers. The idea of people and creatures literally leaping out of a book through the power of a reading voice is an amazingly beautiful one – even if it’s uncontrollability did have dire consequences in this book. How many times have you wished the books you love could just come to live beside you?

The relationship between Meggie and Mo was heartwarming, a father and daughter with no one but each other, and I hope to see that that progresses with the rest of the trilogy, as Meggie continues to mature – especially in face of everything Inkheart puts her through.

I did feel that the book was a little on the long side, like it dragged a little towards the end, however I will own up to having spent a rather long – and interrupted – time reading it. I am very curious to see how the rest of the series unfolds in Inkspell and Inkdeath. 4/5

Orphan, Clock Keeper and Thief

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Brian Selznick

525 pages, published 2007

When Hugo Cabret's father, a clockmaker, dies in a museum fire, the young Hugo is taken in by his Uncle Claude. Employed and boarded by the train station, the drunken Claude teaches Hugo how to run and maintain the stations various clocks ... which, as it turns out, was fortunate, for when his Uncle Claude suddenly disappears, Hugo has to maintain the clocks in order to hide the disappearace and keep what little home he has.

Unable to cash his uncle's pay checks for fear of discovery, Hugo must (grudgingly) resort to stealing - both to survive and to aid his secret and most determined project. Hiding away within the walls of the station, Hugo squirrels away small mechanical components that he uses in his attempt to fix the mechanical automaton discovered by his father.

His attempts (and dodging of the Station Master) run smoothly until the day he is caught stealing a wind-up mouse from the station toy store. The store keeper is rightly upset by the boys ongoing thievery, but when he sees Hugo's notebook, filled with his father's sketches of the automaton, he reacts severly: taking the boy's notebook and threatening to burn it.

Why is the old man so upset? What does he know about Hugo's machine? And why won't he give him back his notebook?

The Invention of Hugo Cabret was an interesting read - nice story, reasonably developed characters and just enough of a mystery to keep you interesting. But what turns this book from an 'okay' book to a 'fantastic' book is that is is 90% pictures. The written text itself is actually very limited; most of the story is told through closely sequential (and full page) illustrations. I'm not quite sure I'd call it a graphic novel, but it is certainly a unique way of story telling. Definately worth a look at. 4.5/5