The Keys to the Kingdom is a fantasy–adventurebook series, written by Garth Nix; having started in 2003 with plans to span seven books, six books have been published thus far.
The series’ protagonist is an asthmatic 12-year-old boy, Arthur Penhaligon. The series begins on a Monday, with the main events starting a week later on the next Monday. Each book moves onto the next day of this week, concluding on Sunday. Each day features beings, collectively known as the Trustees, who each govern a portion of the House, which is the center of all Universes. The seven demesnes of the House are, in the following order: the Lower House, the Far Reaches, the Border Sea, the Great Maze, the Middle House, the Upper House, and the Incomparable Gardens.
In the beginning of the first book, Arthur lives a relatively normal life as an adopted child in a large and caring family. There is reference to biological terrorism in the recent past, hinting at the book’s temporal setting. An asthma attack on a Monday that should have killed him brings him to the Lower House, where he is to find the cure to a plague brought to his world by its agents. By convenience, he is declared Heir to the Kingdom, and given the Lesser Half of the First Key, which is shaped like the minute hand of a clock. Because of this Key’s magical properties, Arthur is relieved of his asthma, and proceeds to a strange and dangerous set of adventures.
As Arthur discovers, the Will of the Architect (Creator of the House and the “Secondary Realms” that surround it) was not fulfilled as it should have been. Instead, it was broken into seven pieces by the Architect’s Trustees, the Morrow Days. The Will was forced to act on its own, and its First Part chooses Arthur to be the Heir to the Kingdom. It thus becomes Arthur’s responsibility to recover each of the missing pieces of the Will, defeat each Trustee – each of whom has been afflicted with one of the seven deadly sins – and claim their domain by taking their respective Key.
Author Garth Nix’s approach to the narrative has drawn heavily on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, with continuous references to archetype and the number 7.
BOOK ONE: Mister Monday
BOOK TWO: Nix, Garth (2004). Grim Tuesday.
BOOK THREE: Nix, Garth (2005). Drowned Wednesday
BOOK FOUR: Nix, Garth (2006). Sir Thursday\.
BOOK FIVE: Nix, Garth (2007). Lady Friday.
BOOK SIX: Nix, Garth (1st July, 2008 (UK)). Superior Saturday.
JEFFREY BROWN: “The world is dark and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.”
So begins “The Tale of Despereaux,” a 270-page fable for children with illustrations by Timothy Basil Ering, that tells of a big-eared little mouse named Despereaux who falls hard for a princess, escapes some nasty rats in a dark dungeon, and goes on a dangerous and ultimately successful quest to save his love. “The Tale of Despereaux” is the 2004 winner of the Newberry Medal, given by the American Library Association for “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.”
The author is 39-year-old Kate DiCamillo, who grew up in Florida and now lives in Minneapolis. “Despereaux” is her third novel for children. Kate DiCamillo, congratulations, and welcome.
KATE DICAMILLO: Thank you, and thank you.
JEFFREY BROWN: So this is the adventures of a very unlikely hero: a mouse who falls in love with a princess. He loves music, he loves tales of knights. What made you write this story?
KATE DICAMILLO: My best friend’s son, about three years ago — he was 8 years old — asked me for the story of an unlikely hero. And I told him at the time that I didn’t do stories on command. And he said, “But this is a story that you’ll want to tell. It’s about this unlikely hero, and he’s got,” he said, “exceptionally large ears.” He’s a very precocious kid. And I said, “That’s all nice, but I don’t think that I’m the one to do it.” And he said, “It’s a wonderful story. You have to write it down.” And I said, “What happens in the story?” And he said, “I don’t know, but when you write it down, then we’ll find out.” And so…
JEFFREY BROWN: That’s your job, huh?
KATE DICAMILLO: Yeah, that’s my job. He’s got a clear division of labor there, you know. And so, I still didn’t think I could do anything with it, but when I got back home, the phrase “unlikely hero” just kind of stuck in my head. And I started doodling, and it’s not a big leap from an unlikely hero with large ears to get to a mouse.
JEFFREY BROWN: What is it about mice and children’s literature? My own son is reading “The Red Wall” series — so many mice characters. So, why?
KATE DICAMILLO: Why? I think that children can readily identify with something so small and defenseless and that the rest of the world considers unimportant. I think that kids feel powerless, and what’s more powerless than a mouse? And so, I think kids kind of exist on the outside of the adult world. And so, I think they can identify with rodents. I don’t know, I can.
JEFFREY BROWN: In fact, in addition to all the kind of light that you have in this story, there’s a lot of darkness.
KATE DICAMILLO: There is.
JEFFREY BROWN: There are parents who aren’t all that nice. There are kids left alone, even beaten.
KATE DICAMILLO: Right.
JEFFREY BROWN: There’s the prison.
KATE DICAMILLO: Right, there’s a lot of darkness in the world. And I think it’s a disservice to think that kids don’t know that the world is full of all kinds of dangers and dark things. They know. And for adults to tell them that the world is only sweetness and light when the kids can see something entirely different in front of them is — that’s kind of ridiculous. So I want stories — I wanted stories, as a kid, that dealt with the world the way I saw it, which was tragic and wonderful, light and dark.
JEFFREY BROWN: A balance of the two?
KATE DICAMILLO: Yeah.
JEFFREY BROWN: I read that the author you were reading at the time or who most influenced you for this book was Charles Dickens?
KATE DICAMILLO: I read Dickens the whole time I was working on this. I went back and read all of my favorites — “A Tale of Two Cities,” in particular. Dickens has a wonderful saying: “Make them laugh, make them cry, but most of all, make them wait.”
JEFFREY BROWN: “Make them wait” means?
KATE DICAMILLO: Make them wait: You want them to keep on reading, and you want them to be on the edge of their seats. And so, I went back for my own pleasure, and, also, to figure out how he did that. And so, that was — the book is very much like a fairy tale, but it owes a lot, I think, to all the Dickens that I was reading at the time, too.
JEFFREY BROWN: One of the techniques that you use is to speak directly to the reader.
KATE DICAMILLO: A very old technique.
JEFFREY BROWN: The narrator says, “Reader, listen to me now,” or, “Let me tell you,” or, “Have you ever thought about this, reader?” Why do that?
KATE DICAMILLO: Why do that? I don’t know. You’re overestimating me if you think that I’m doing things consciously, because I’m not. I’m just trying to get the story down on paper. I never know what I’m doing. But I think, in retrospect, I can say that because it was such a different kind of story for me to tell. I was considered a southern storyteller, and here I am in a totally different world with a totally different kind of story. I think that that narrator popped up because I was talking myself through the telling of the tale. I was afraid in the telling, and the narrator, this all-knowing voice, calmed me to have it on the paper, and I think that’s why it showed it.
JEFFREY BROWN: Why don’t you read a little bit, so we can get the flavor. This is when the mouse Despereaux meets the princess.
KATE DICAMILLO: Yes, a pivotal moment in the book. I’m going to read it to you, Jeffrey. Listen up, okay?
“The Princess Pea looked down at Despereaux. She smiled at him. And while her father played another song, a song about the deep purple falling over sleepy garden walls, the princess reached out and touched the top of the mouse’s head.
“Despereaux stared up at her in wonder. The Pea, he decided, looked just like the picture of the fair maiden in the book in the library. The princess smiled at Despereaux again, and this time, Despereaux smiled back. And then, something incredible happened. The mouse fell in love.
“Reader, you may ask this question. In fact, you must ask this question. Is it ridiculous for a very small, sickly, big-eared mouse to fall in love with a beautiful human princess named Pea? The answer is, yes, of course it’s ridiculous. Love is ridiculous. But love is also wonderful and powerful. And Despereaux’s love for the Princess Pea would prove in time to be all of these things: Powerful, wonderful, and ridiculous.”
JEFFREY BROWN: Powerful, wonderful, ridiculous. And then, reader, read on to find out what happens.
KATE DICAMILLO: Yeah, yeah, please do, yeah. I hope that you do.
JEFFREY BROWN: Something that I wonder about, because I see my own children changing so quickly year to year.
KATE DICAMILLO: Yeah.
JEFFREY BROWN: An 8-year-old is so different from a 10-year-old, so different from a 12-year-old. When you’re writing for children, how do you pitch it? To what age? Who’s the reader you’re writing for?
KATE DICAMILLO: I don’t pitch it. I just — the reader that I’m writing for is me. And so, I tell the story that I need to tell, and, hopefully, that’s for the marketing department to say who I’ve written it for. I just tell the story that I’m supposed to tell. I couldn’t possibly sit down and write to somebody, because that would be like trying to write to the market, and you can’t do that. I can only tell whatever it is that I’m given to tell, and then other people will make the decision about who it’s for, I guess.
JEFFREY BROWN: But you’ve written three books now for young readers and they’ve all been quite successful.
KATE DICAMILLO: Good fortune.
JEFFREY BROWN: Is there a key, though, that you’ve come up with for how to reach young people?
KATE DICAMILLO: I put my heart on the page when I tell them the story. That’s the only thing I know how to do. I don’t know if that’s the key, but that’s what I do. That’s what I hope to keep on doing.
JEFFREY BROWN: Okay, “The Tale of Despereaux,” Kate DiCamillo. Again, congratulations.
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.
Illustrator becomes author
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 Herrder Diebe into English. With manuscript in hand, she made the rounds of the top English publishers.
Thief Lord steals the hearts of millions
Several companies showed an interest, but at the same time the fates were actively at work at The Chicken House, a new book publisher in England. The Chicken House was founded in 2000 by Barry Cunningham, who had a long career in publishing and was known for taking chances on new writers. In fact, it was Cunningham who first decided to publish the Harry Potter series after British author J. K. Rowling (c. 1966–) was turned down by countless other publishers. In this case, Funke did not go to Cunningham. Cunningham went looking for her, after he received a letter from an eleven-year-old girl in England named Clara, asking why her favorite author (Cornelia Funke) was not published in English. Clara was bilingual, she spoke both German and English, so she had been enjoying Funke’s books for several years.
Cornelia Funke’s Favorite Books
In many of her interviews, writer Cornelia Funke describes herself as a passionate reader. And, as she revealed in an AudioFile interview, one of her goals as an author is to “try to awaken the passion for reading in children and adults.” In Inkheart, one way Funke accomplishes this goal is by introducing her audience to classic works of fiction. Each chapter begins with a quote from a book, and there are references to books such as The Wind in the Willows by Scottish author Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) sprinkled throughout the text. In an article posted on the Guardian Unlimited Web site, Funke revealed her own “favourite bedtime stories,” many of which are mentioned in Inkheart.
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
The BFG by Roald Dahl.
What Witch by Eva Ibbotson.
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.
Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver by Michael Ende.
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.
The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren.
The War of the Buttons by Louis Peraud.
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
The Princess Bride by William Goldman.
Cunningham tracked down Funke’s agent, read the manuscript, and immediately bought the English-language rights for Herr der Diebe and for Drachenreiter. In July of 2000 The Thief Lord was published in England. It sold out in just ten days, an unheard-of phenomenon for a children’s book. Two years later Funke’s story debuted in the United States. Critics heaped praise on The Thief Lord, calling it an immediate classic. Readers agreed, and the book reached the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained comfortably perched for twenty-five weeks. The Thief Lord was named a best book of the year by many publications, including School Library Journal and Parenting Magazine. It also won a slew of awards, including the prestigious Mildred L. Batchelder Award, which is presented annually by the American Library Association to the best book originally published in a foreign language and then translated and published in the United States.
Part Peter Pan and part Robin Hood and Oliver Twist, The Thief Lord is set against the backdrop of Venice, Italy. Rebecca Sinkler of the New York Times called the book a “love song to the city and its splendors.” In fact, Venice is one of Funke’s favorite destinations, and she was inspired to write the story during one of her many visits. “I wanted to tell children that there is a place in this world that is real and full of history, but also contains magic and mystery,” she explained to Trudy Wyss in an interview on the Borders Books Web site. The many alleyways and canals of Venice were perfect for the story because, as Funke told Wyss, “there are hundreds of hiding places.”
At the story’s center are two orphans, twelve-year-old Prosper and his five-year-old brother, Bo, who run away from Hamburg to Venice because their aunt and uncle want to separate them. When they arrive in the strange city, they are taken in by a band of young pickpockets and thieves who are led by Scipio, the thirteen-year-old masked Thief Lord. The boys live comfortably enough with their new-found friends in an abandoned movie theater until they discover they are being tracked by an investigator hired by their aunt and uncle. They also run into trouble when the gang is hired to steal a wooden horse’s wing that long ago was broken off a magical carousel. The carousel has the power to make “adults out of children and children out of adults.”
Written from the heart
Readers were spellbound by the many twists and turns in the plot of The Thief Lord, and Funke left her audience wanting more. They were rewarded in October of 2003 when Scholastic Press, her American
publisher, released Inkheart. There is a gleam in Funke’s eye when she talks about this book, which she believes to be one of her best efforts. As she explained in the Bookwrap video, she put the “blood of her heart” into writing it: “There are those people who love books and are greedy for books and the rustling of paper and the printed letter and I wanted to write about this. This lust for the printed word. And I think Inkheart is all about that. The enchantment that comes from books.”
Good authors make books come alive for their readers. In Inkheart, twelve-year-old Meggie loves books so much that she regularly falls asleep with them. Her father, Mo, teases her, saying, “I’m sure it must be very comfortable sleeping with a hard, rectangular thing like that under your head.” But Meggie enjoys taking her books to bed because the books whisper their stories to her at night. Books are also important to her father, who earns his living by traveling across the country repairing and caring for old volumes. He does not, however, read to his daughter because of a secret power he possesses: if Mo reads a book aloud, its characters leave the pages and enter the real world. Mo discovered his gift several years earlier, when he released characters from the book Inkheart. One of them, named Capricorn, is so evil that his heart is said to be made of ink. Capricorn hunts down Mo because he wants to destroy Inkheart, ensuring that he will never return to its pages.
The success of Inkheart followed that of The Thief Lord. The book debuted at number nine on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed on the list into 2004. It also received rave reviews. Publisher’sWeekly enthused that “readers will be captivated by the chilling and thrilling world [Funke] has created.” James Neal Webb of BookPage went so far as to call it “a magical, life-altering volume.”
Funke on film
To promote her books, in November of 2003 Funke left Hamburg and her children, Anna and Ben, and went on a U.S. book tour. (The character of Bo in The Thief Lord was based on Ben.) She was interviewed on television and radio and visited many bookstores across the United States. In her Bookwrap video interview Funke commented about the American children she met on tour, and how open and curious they were. “It was great fun to meet them,” she said. “I was especially enchanted by the book maniacs in America. I didn’t know there was so many here…. And I have to confess this kind of book passion I have only met in America.”
Funke revealed to the Miami Herald that there are two sequels planned for Inkheart. The second in the series, called Inkblood, has already been written and is being translated from the German, with an expected release date of 2005. In addition, there are movies in the works based on The Thief Lord and on the Inkheart trilogy. Once her books hit the big screen, Funke, already a beloved writer, will no doubt become a writing phenomenon. And there is also no doubt that there are many more books to come from her pen. As she told Wyss, “Writing is my passion…. I couldn’t live without it.”
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