It is hard to avoid preciosity in books about books, but here Funke pulls off the feat with vigor. Meggie, an avid reader, lives alone with her father, a bookbinder; her mother disappeared years before. When a disturbing stranger named Dustfingers intrudes on their peace, she gradually discovers that the barrier between books and the real world is permeable and that an ill-fated read-aloud years ago unleashed Capricorn, who "would feed [a] bird to [a] cat on purpose . . . and the little creature's screeching and struggling would be as sweet as honey to him." Funke takes her time with her tale, investing her situations with palpable menace and limning her characters with acute sensitivity; she creates in Meggie a stalwart heroine who never loses her childish nature even as she works to contain the monster and bring her mother back. Master translator Bell takes the German text and spins out of it vivid images and heart-stopping language that impel the reader through this adventure about narratives-a true feast for anyone who has ever been lost in a book. (Fiction. 10+)
We’re starting to shake off winter and emerge, blinking, into the light of early Spring. No better time, we think, to go looking for a great new read. Our newest Monthly Picks are here, and we couldn’t be more pleased to share them with you. We were swept up in a novel of messy, young […]
I wrote Ink and Bone (and the subsequent upcoming novels of the Great Library series) because, quite simply, I love books. And maybe I love print books a little more, because they are a living expression of history. They are a beautiful art form of their very own, the product of centuries of knowledge, experience, technology, […]
Fans of Cassandra Claire’s bestselling Mortal Instruments series let out a collective squee when Freeform resurrected the franchise’s onscreen potential after the film didn’t do so great. Enter the Shadowhunters TV show, giving fans another chance to see their favorite characters from City of Bones in as close to real life as possible. The series has me thinking: what […]