Gentle Readers will be aware that YHB is a fan of Cornelia Funke. So I bought Igraine the Brave with the idea of making it a bedtime book for My Perfect Non-Reader. It’s aimed for an audience a good bit younger than Inkheart is. It’s shorter, simpler (in plot and character) and sillier. And it’s terrific.
Oh, I doubt it will stick with anyone for very long. There isn’t anything in it that’s peculiarly memorable and powerful. The thing that I find most impressive about it is that it seems to be a terrific counterweight to the sexism in a lot of adventure stories, without coming off as Educational or Good-for-you.
The title character is a twelve-year-old girl who wants to be a knight. Girls don’t become knights, of course, but her parents are vaguely supportive, although they would prefer that she follow their path and become a sorceress. And they don’t want her doing anything dangerous. Not so much because she’s a girl, but because she’s their daughter. They are kid’s-book parents, well-meaning, out-of-it, simultaneously powerful and powerless, and transformed into pigs. Well, that last one isn’t in all the kid’s books, but most of them. Anyway, it’s up to Igraine and her brother to save the castle (and the Singing Books of Magic), and since her brother is better suited to trying to restore her parents to their proper shape by sorcerous means, it’s up to Igraine to put on the suit of armor that her parents were giving her for a twelfth-birthday present, steal a charger, and go get ’em. And she does.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.