105 pages • 3 hours read
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Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.
Short Answer
1. What features—including plot points, characters, themes, and symbols—are typical of fantasy novels?
Teaching Suggestion: You may provide your students with the links above as part of their pre-reading homework assignments, assign them computer lab time for the same purpose, or display these resources on a smart board or other projection system in your classroom. Students should be invited to discuss whether any of the features are familiar from other texts they have read or watched. Encourage students to look for them when they begin reading Inkheart.
Differentiation Suggestion: For students who would benefit from an extra challenge, they could independently research the Reading Context question above using additional online or library sources.
2. Cover art can frequently allude to important themes or ideas present in the work. What does the cover of Inkheart suggest about the plot or theme?
Teaching Suggestion: To carry out this prediction activity, project the book’s cover or hand out class copies of the book to the students. This activity would work best as a whole-class discussion, but could also work in small groups. Encourage students to make predictions, and remind them that there are no wrong answers. If you are projecting the cover rather than using physical copies of the book for this activity, it may be beneficial to gradually reveal the cover (see link below) and invite students’ guesses. If time allows, you might find and study a variety of editions with different cover art.
Personal Connection Prompt
This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.
If you could pull a character out of your favorite novel, movie, or television series, who would you choose? How might they feel about finding themselves in our modern world? Next, imagine that you could transport yourself into the world of one of your favorite books, movies, or television series. Which imaginary world would you visit and why? Are there things about your life that you would miss or aspects about the new world that you might struggle to adjust to?
Teaching Suggestion: This prompt can be discussed as a group or used as an independent, free-writing exercise. Students are encouraged to put themselves in the shoes of someone entering another world, a fantasy world in particular. This prepares them to sympathize with characters like Dustfinger, Resa, Farid, Capricorn, Basta, and Fenoglio, who find themselves unexpectedly transported into other realities. It also prepares them to reflect on the important theme of The Power of Literature and the fantasy genre.
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Including features:
By Cornelia Funke