Biography
Cornelia Funke was born in 1958 in Dorsten, Westphalia, located in the central region of Germany. Funke, who spoke with Sue Corbett of the Miami Herald, explained that her last name is pronounced FOON-kah. She also mentioned that in the United States "people say 'Funky,' and I rather like that." Funke did not set out to be a writer. When she was eighteen years old she left Dorsten to study at the University of Hamburg, where she earned a degree in education theory. Not sure what to do after graduation, Funke decided to take a course in book illustration at the Hamburg State College of Design.
Funke started out designing board games and illustrating books for other authors. After illustrating for several years, however, she began to lose interest in her job. "I was, I have to admit, bored by the stories I had to illustrate," Funke explained in a Bookwrap video interview online. Instead, she wanted to draw pictures for books that were exciting, books about dragons and adventure. She recalled that one night, at the age of twenty-eight, she started to write her own story. The illustrator-turned-author did not suffer the usual trials of first-time writers. She sent her manuscript out to four German publishing houses and all four wanted to publish it.
"If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids. A library book, I imagine, is a happy book."
Funke's earliest books, most of which she illustrated herself, were short and aimed at younger readers of about eight years old. Her first longer, chapter book for older children was
Drachenreiter (
Dragonrider), published in Germany in 1997. It was followed in 2000 by
Herr der Diebe (
The Thief Lord). The book was a phenomenal success in Germany, but Funke was not satisfied. She was determined to take a shot at the English-language market, where she knew her stories would have a chance to be read by a wider audience. Funke turned to her cousin, Oliver Latsch, and asked him to translate
Herr der Diebe into English. With manuscript in hand, she made the rounds of the top English publishers.
Public Acclaim
For years Cornelia Funke has been one of the best-known and bestselling children's authors in Germany. In fact, many people have called her the German J. K. Rowling. Americans, however, were not exposed to Funke's work until 2002, when her book Herr der Diebe was translated into English and released by Scholastic Press as
The Thief Lord. The response was immediate and overwhelming. Like their German counterparts, young American readers gobbled up the fantastic tale of two orphans set loose among the canals and streets of Venice, Italy. The book made every major bestseller list and won countless awards. It also established Funke as a storyteller on an international scale, since the book has since been published in nearly forty countries. In October of 2003 Funke released her second book in the United States,
Inkheart. Publisher's Weekly called it "delectably transfixing," and readers were left clamoring for more of their favorite new author.
