Cornelia Funke's Reading List

"I was raised with stories of gingerbread houses and dark forests, with castles wrapped in roses and a dead horse’s head talking to a young girl — “The Goose Maid” still makes me shudder — and their interpretation of German landscapes. These tales are about the fears and hopes of a bygone age, of mean stepmothers and foolish heroes. I probably underestimate how strong an influence they had on my writing. I also avidly read the writers’ fairy tales—Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde and the Swedish myths that Astrid Lindgren plays with in such magical ways. The similarities are fascinating, especially when one finds them in cultures with very different social structures and religious beliefs. They make us aware of fundamental human traits—of fears and desires we all share. Fairy tales don’t romanticize human nature, though they may romanticize other things. Rather, they show us as cruel and greedy, revengeful and often as very selfish. But of course, they also show our wish to be noble, selfless, caring—and brave enough to face danger and death without fear. I like the thought. It is interesting that we so often associate men with fairy tales just because they wrote down stories told by women. I certainly see myself more in the tradition of those female oral storytellers. I also found it interesting that, for example, in Russian tales (and tales I suspect to be much older), women are stronger and far more independent characters than in more comparatively recent tales. Maybe these are echoes of matriarchal structures and long forgotten goddesses. Sign up here for our newsletter featuring the best children’s and young adult books, as recommended by authors, teachers, librarians and, of course, kids. The Grimms made the tales they collected fit their values of a nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. Of course, the women stayed home and waited for the prince to rescue them, and the men always came home after an adventure. I think we are all in constant transition, looking for the magical path that will lead us to our destiny. Fairy tales contain such deep emotional truths about human nature that they can’t help but resonate. Fairy tales also work well with visual storytelling. For example, fear represented as a dragon, or the image of a girl on her knees picking lentils out of the ash. In modern storytelling, we often forget how much truth one powerful image can hold. As an illustrator, I’m very aware of it. In sharp contrast to words, images are always multi-layered. They hold subconscious meaning we react to, even though we may not be able to immediately decipher them."

"I wrote Inkworld about my obsession with books. It is also a reflection on the question of whether we are all just characters in a tale—whether we can change it, and who writes it. It is a meditation on what we should fight for, on fascism, on being a child, and on being a parent. Then of course there’s the character Dustfinger, who always tells the story in his own way. Inkdeath (the third book in the trilogy) is very much my reaction to Pullman’s concept of death in His Dark Materials ."

"I owe this book to the children I worked with as a social worker. I saw their courage, their perseverance, the responsibility they took for their younger siblings when their parents let them down. I wanted to show that children on their own are not just crippled poor things who become mean and broken. I wanted to show their strength, their friendships and their unselfish wish to save each other. My wish when I was a child to grow up—to make my own decisions."

"This is the book series that fulfils my dream to ride a dragon. It’s also my love song to all the fabulous creatures of this planet. I’m so tired of the human perspective on life and the world that everything was just created to be exploited and devoured by our species. Dragon Rider talks about the shimmering net of life and how we should be part of it instead of just tearing it apart."