Inkheart

The concept of Inkheart is an interesting one. The story revolves around Mo and his daughter Meggie. Her mother has disappeared and they travel the countryside looking into old bookstores and repairing old books that need repair. Later on in the story, Meggie learns that Mo is a wizard of sorts that can read characters and other objects out of the books that he reads aloud. But as all the fantasy people tell us, "Magic comes with a price." 

  

Every time something is read out of a book, something else must take its place, and that is what happened to Meggie's mother. She went in to replace the characters that came out of the book Inkheart which Mo was reading. They are captured by our antagonist, Capicorn, who wants Mo to read the Shadow out of Inkheart. Together with their aunt Elinor, Dustfinger (another Inkheart character), and Farid from 1001 Arabian Nights must defeat Capicorn and restore balance.

 

A lot of fans of the book complained about the movie adaptation. They did not agree with the casting of the characters, and I admit after reading the book I can see where they were complaining. However, since I saw the movie before reading the book I do not have the same problem, and quite frankly no matter what description Funke gave me, they still looked like the movie characters to me. They really stayed true to the spirit of the book and the actors portrayed their characters quite well even if they didn't look like the descriptions in the book. And this was the first time I actually saw Andy Serkis as Serkis and not as Gollum!

All in all I would suggest both the book and the movie. They're both an interesting. And for the record, the book is the first in a trilogy. The second book is just as good whereas they go to Inkheart world and have to survive there. I haven't read the third one yet.