Inkheart
core novel 2003 Inkheart
Record
| Original title | Tintenherz |
|---|---|
| First published | 2003 |
| Original language |  DE |
| First English translation | 2003 |
| Translator | Anthea Bell |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.93 (447,771 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 563 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780439531641 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Inkheart follows twelve-year-old Meggie Folchart, who lives a quiet life with her father Mo, a skilled bookbinder, unaware that the two of them share an extraordinarily rare and dangerous ability: reading aloud from a book can bring its characters physically into the real world, while something or someone from the real world is drawn into the book to take their place. Years earlier, Mo accidentally read several menacing figures out of a book called Inkheart, including the sinister Capricorn, while his wife vanished into the story in their place. When Capricorn and his men reappear in Meggie and Mo's lives seeking a rare surviving copy of the book, father and daughter are drawn into a dangerous struggle over the power Mo has spent years trying to hide.
Where it sits
- Universe: Inkheart
- Series: Inkheart core; position 1 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Cornelia Funke
Awards (verified)
- Notable Children's Books (Notable Children's Books), 2004: honor; ALSC/ALA's own annual recognition list, not a competitive single-winner award; registered as 'honor' per this project's enum.
Notes
- Meggie's father Mo, a bookbinder with the rare ability to read characters out of books, is hunted by a villain he once accidentally read out of the novel Inkheart itself.
- On the translation: English translation published the same year as the German original (Chicken House UK / Scholastic US).
- From the series record (Inkheart): A completed trilogy, registered under each novel's original German publication year per this project's translated-work convention (already applied to The Neverending Story). No further Inkworld novels by Cornelia Funke found.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Inkheart: position 1 of 3: next Inkspell (2005)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Inkheart
- Noirish (blog): book note on Inkheart (2003; trans. 2003, Anthea Bell)
- ALA/ALSC: Inkheart, Notable Children's Books
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