The Thief Lord

Funke is a prolific children’s author who is best known for The Thief Lord, the Dragon Rider series, and the Inkheart series. Funke’s writing commonly features children overcoming adversity. Before she became an author, Funke was a social worker, and in an interview included with the 2020 paperback reprinting of The Thief Lord, Funke explains how this has impacted her work:

When I worked as a social worker, I encountered many different children. I never forgot the tenderness and devotion siblings showed one another when parents often failed to play that protective role. And the children’s courage with which they faced their sometimes tough family life left a real impression on me (but I also learned from these children that being brave doesn’t always necessarily mean you get a happy ending).

In her focus on brave and resourceful child protagonists, Funke draws on the trope of the orphaned child—a staple of middle-grade fiction. Children who are orphans like Prosper and Bo in The Thief Lord must grow up quickly but can also act more independently than a child living with parents; both elements tend to appeal to middle-grade readers, who are beginning their own coming-of-age arcs and can live vicariously through characters making decisions that their own parents wouldn’t let them make.