Ink and Dust: Cornelia Funke‘s World

Mirona Ulici

When I was little, I al­ways thought how it would be to meet my fa­vour­ite char­ac­ter from my fa­vour­ite fairytale: Beauty from Beauty and the Beast. I have al­ways ima­gined my­self talk­ing to her and also tak­ing her place. I had so many ques­tions to ask her and so many things to share. As time passed by, I have al­ways found my refuge in books. I read a lot and I really wanted to be part of a story. Now, think about your­self and let me tell you about a won­der­ful story, in which char­ac­ters meet their cre­at­ors and someone has the power to change the writ­ten story.

Ink­heart is a book writ­ten by a Ger­man au­thor, Cor­ne­lia Funke. She has the gift of giv­ing power to words. Ink­heart  tells the story of Mag­gie, a 12 year-old girl and her father, Mo. He is a book­binder and this is why they travel a lot. He is con­stantly look­ing for some­thing, a book which has the same title: Ink­heart. Mo, who is also called Sil­ver­tongue, has a spe­cial gift: he can read a char­ac­ter out or into a book. This means that when he reads aloud, the char­ac­ters from that story comes to life. Un­til here, everything seems quite nor­mal for a story world, but the au­thor has a won­der­ful way of in­tro­du­cing you in a ma­gical ink world. Twelve years ago, when Mag­gie was just a baby, Mo read aloud from the book Ink­heart. With his powers, he read out of the book three char­ac­ters: Capri­corn, Basta and Dust­finger. The bad thing is that Mo’s wife went into the story, tak­ing their place. From then on, Mo star­ted search­ing all Ink­heart books, hope­fully think­ing that he could bring back his wife. Un­til now, it seems that this story is fas­cin­at­ing and full of ma­gic. But if you are still not con­vinced to step into the story, let’s take a look at the three char­ac­ters that came out.

Capri­corn, Basta and Dust­finger just woke up in an­other world. Capri­corn is the head of a me­di­eval band of rob­bers and Basta is his loyal man. Dust­finger is a skilled per­former who plays with fire and he is known as fire-eater. They found them­selves in a totally dif­fer­ent and new en­vir­on­ment and they had to do some­thing. We have just glimpses of the world they came from. It is a world full of fair­ies, trolls, glass men and ma­gic, a world of knights and castles. And they had two op­tions: to ad­apt or to go back. And these char­ac­ters, even if they came from the same story they made dif­fer­ent choices. Dust­finger could not ad­apt in this new world. He was con­stantly look­ing for Mo and he tried des­per­ately to go back in his world. Even after twelve years, he could not stay any longer in this new world. He was con­stantly think­ing about his wife and the kids, and they also ap­peared in his thoughts ask­ing him to go back. On the other side we have Capri­corn. He and Basta are the evil ones. They are the ones who seem to ad­apt per­fectly to this new world.  He found a place in Italy, a ruined vil­lage, which seemed per­fect for his plans. He wanted to be­come rich, he wanted to cap­ture Mo and made him read out from the story he came from The Shadow. The Shadow is the most fear­ful char­ac­ter from that story. And, ob­vi­ously, just like every evil char­ac­ter, Capri­corn wanted to rule the world. It did not mat­ter which world. He just wanted to be the ruler. He and his guys seemed to cre­ate a world full of chaos and shad­ows. They wore black suits and they got used very quickly with the guns they have found in the new world. 

What do you think about this book so far? Do you feel like read­ing this book im­me­di­ately? If not, let me present you an­other as­pect of this in­cred­ible book. If you were a char­ac­ter, how would you feel meet­ing your cre­ator, the au­thor that in­ven­ted you? When they found out that there is no other Ink­heart books left, be­cause Capri­corn had gathered all books and burnt them, Mo, Mag­gie and Dust­finger tried to find the au­thor of the book, Fegnolio. The meet­ing between the au­thor and his char­ac­ters was thrill­ing, but on the other hand, shock­ing. Dust­finger did not want to meet his au­thor. The au­thor just cre­ated him. They lived in dif­fer­ent worlds and they had dif­fer­ent val­ues. On the other hand we have the au­thor, Fegnolio, who was so ex­cited to meet one of his char­ac­ters that he seemed to be like a child get­ting his fa­vor­ite toy. Even after hav­ing been cap­tured by Capri­corn, he did not seem to have a prob­lem. He was fas­cin­ated by the char­ac­ters he has cre­ated, by the world they have cre­ated on their own. There is an­other in­ter­est­ing as­pect presen­ted in the book. After meet­ing his cre­ator, Dust­finger found the end of the story, the end of his story. He would die. At first, he did  not seem to be bothered by the things he found out. Even if he knew  he would die at the end of the story, he still wanted to go back in his world and meet his wife. The love for his fam­ily was stronger than the love for his own life. 

I feel like telling you  more about this book, but I would like you to find out more by read­ing it your­self. I would like to tell you more about Dust­finger. He has such an in­ter­est­ing per­son­al­ity which in­stantly makes you love him. But, I want to let you fall in love with him after you have read the story. At the end, I want to ask you a ques­tion, and I want you to think about it: did you ever wish you could be part of a story? Fegnolio’s wish was to be sent in the book he wrote. He wanted to live in the fic­tional world he cre­ated. And his wish was ful­filled. He was read into the book.

What about you? Which is the story you want to go in? Which char­ac­ter do you want to re­place? And how would you change that story? 

Mirona Ulici