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 The Thief Lord
is a sweet story of a group of runaways living in an abandoned cinema in Venice. Brothers Prosper and Bo are newcomers, on the run from an aunt and uncle who want to separate them. Together with a girl called Hornet, and two other boys, Mosca and Riccio, they live well on luxuries they are able to salvage from what tourists throw away, and on the proceeds of the burglaries committed by their patron, the Thief Lord. In exchange for their share of the profits, the children are the go between for the Thief Lord and a crooked antiques dealer, allowing the Thief Lord complete anonymity.
But this is no Dickensian Fagin the children deal with – the Thief Lord is barely older than his charges, and he’s not as tough as he seems. When the antiques dealer, believing the Thief Lord to be an adult, commissions a specific burglary on behalf of an equally anonymous third party, the Thief Lord’s carefully constructed security begins to unravel.
Added to the mix is the unfortunate interference of the detective (and his pet tortoise) hired to find
Prosper and Bo.
The Thief Lord is a magical realism suspense story, filled with twists and turns and a little bit of magic. It’s a light read – there are heavy consequences to the actions the children take, but none are fatal or overly traumatic as recent children’s authors, such as JK Rowling and Philip Pullman, have brought into the genre. Despite this, there are a number of fairly deep themes running through it, and Funke asks questions without giving any convenient answers. One of these is children behaving with maturity
pitted against immature adults, but Funke avoids a clichéd “Home Alone” farce by balancing it with some truly sensible adults who have a healthy sense of fun and adventure. And, although the older children behave like adults, learning impressive negotiation and money management skills, Funke allows them to make the mistakes children would make, and carry the consequences.
copyright © Elsa Neal 2007 (Please contact the
for permission to reprint this article.)
The
Thief Lord is available from Amazon.com Cornelia
Funke is also the author of Inkheart
and Inkspell.
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