The Thief Lord

Very, very good. Sparkling and witty and funny and relatable: I want to live in this Venice. I want to visit that island; I want to have lunch with Victor & feed lettuce to his turtles; I want to rumple Bo's hair and make Prosper feel safe. I want to live in a world where magic is as easy as finding a wing and as difficult as growing up.
Funke makes me believe we're already there. Brilliant.

Prosper and Bo, two orphaned brothers, flee insensitive relatives and end up in Venice as part of a group of child thieves. The tiny network revolves around charismatic Scipio, the prepubescent Thief Lord, but their happy den is threatened by converging outside forces: a private investigator searching for Bo, a commission for an inexplicable theft, and heartbreaking discoveries about Scipio himself.

Funke has a really fine eye for details, and I liked her brutally realistic approach to the life Prosper and Bo lead in Venice. Too many YA fantasy books would treat this scenario as a time for unrestrained hijinks and hilarity. In contrast, the child thieves of The Thief Lord live a cold, hungry life of nervous anxiety surrounded by tattered show more possessions rescued from the streets. Glamor is in short supply. Which is not to say the book is exactly hard-hearted realism -- a magic carousel features heavily in the plot, and everybody's loose ends are neatly resolved in a happy ending -- but Funke takes a clear-eyed view of the conditions of her characters and the consequences of their actions. Even the book's "happy ending" has bittersweet results for Thief Lord Scipio show less

I read this book after my 9-year-old little friend that sometimes sits and reads with me and brings all her books for me to look over got this from her school library. I love hearing her tell me all about what she's read when she finishes. This time she wasn't her usual enthusiastic self about sharing this story so I asked her if I could read it. I found the book problematic on several levels. One...it's a book marketed for 10–12-year-old children and it seemed that the entire theme of the book is based on the boy known as The Thief Lord and his habits of stealing and how enthralled with him the two boys were that was with him. The second thing that bothered me was that none of the adults in the book seemed to want to confront him on show more it or question him in any way. The boys thought he was some kind of hero because he did whatever he wanted and also was capable of magic that was seldom used for anything good. The story is very slow to get started, and the promised fantasy element doesn't appear until the last 75 pages. There's little emotional involvement, and the rest of the story just meanders. There are adults in the book but none of them ring true or behave like any adult you've ever met would when met with two young runaways and a kid that is a thief even if he does know magic. The amorality of the children, and the author, was a concern. I asked my little friend what she liked about the story if anything, and she, in honest 9-year-old fashion, admitted she was quiet taken with the adults letting the children do whatever they wanted with complete freedom and no punishment. Noone dared to bother them, and they weren't told to clean their room or to go to school. That also worried me slightly until she admitted that she didn't think the way they behaved was right and they should have been in trouble and been sent to their room. show less

Summary: Orphans Prosper and Bo are on the run - after their parents died, their horrible Aunt Esther wanted to adopt five-year-old Bo but not twelve-year-old Prosper, and fearing separation, they headed to Venice, a city that their mother had always described as being full of mystery and wonder. They quickly fall in with a group of street children - pickpockets and petty thieves, ruled over by the mysterious (albeit young) Thief Lord. But even so, their lives are far from stable - their aunt has hired a detective to find the children, and the Thief Lord has accepted a mysterious and dangerous commission to steal something far more valuable than anything they've stolen before.

Review: It would seem as though The Thief Lord has it all: an show more interesting plot, lots of loveable characters, a vividly-depicted setting, some nicely adventurous escapades, more than a few chuckle-inducing moments, and a heartwarming message about the nature of family and home. However, it's clearly for younger readers than Funke's Inkworld series, so readers looking for more of the same might be disappointed - the sensibility's the same, but the story is less meaty even than Inkheart, and lacks the thematic oomph of the later books. It also straddles a weird divide between regular fiction and fantasy. For most of the book, I thought it was simply a regular heist adventure story, and then about 2/3s of the way in, there's suddenly a magical merry-go-round (...yes, really.) It left me at a point where I'm uncomfortable calling it a fantasy novel, because it's mostly not, but it also feels dishonest not to call it fantasy, because the the introduction of the fantasy elements are really jarring if you're not expecting them. Overall, it was a fast and cute read, with lots of individually good elements, but it just never entirely gelled for me - although it did leave me really wanting to go back to Venice. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Middle-grade readers are probably going to enjoy this the most, or adults who are looking for a light diversion. show less

Cornelia Funke, una delle autrici che stimo di più, è riuscita a mio parere a ricreare la fiaba di Peter Pan in chiave moderna: infatti il fulcro di tutto il libro è, da un lato, rimanere bambini per non doversi addossare le responsabilità degli adulti, dall’altro il volere diventare adulti per non dover dipendere da qualcun altro. I protagonisti della banda mi fanno molta tenerezza, perché un momento prima sono lì ad atteggiarsi “da grandi” sfidando il detective Victor, e l’attimo dopo litigano tra loro facendo i capricci. Gli adulti, nella maggioranza dei casi, sono visti come inaffidabili, avari, fedifraghi (Barbarossa) e disinteressati (il padre di Scipio). Insomma, tutte le possibili caratteristiche negative che gli show more si possono assegnare! Insomma, un libro dal punto di vista dei bambini, se così lo possiamo definire. Una lettura leggera e piacevole, ma densa di significati, che ho compreso solo dopo una seconda rilettura a un’”età un po’ più avanzata”, se possiamo definirla così ahah! Le descrizioni di Venezia sono sempre precise e vivide, la scrittura non diventa mai noiosa, ma tiene sempre il lettore sul chi va là. Insomma, se cercate un libro di avventura non troppo impegnativo ma con quel pizzico di fantasia che non guasta mai, allora “Il re dei ladri” è fatto apposta per voi!

Personaggio preferito: Prosper (sono presenti anticipazioni)

E’ il caratteristico bravo fratello maggiore che vuole un bene dell’anima al fratellino e farebbe di tutto per proteggere il fratello, come dimostra più volte durante il romanzo. Quello che forse mi ha colpito maggiormente di questo personaggio è stato il suo conflitto interiore avvenuto quando si trovava davanti al Carosello: diventare un adulto per poter badare a suo fratello come tutore o restare un bambino? Non ha un’esistenza facile, in quanto le decisioni che prende lui si ripercuoteranno inevitabilmente sul fratellino, e per questo dev’essere anche molto riflessivo e prudente. Un’altra sua qualità è l’astuzia, ma dimostra un’estrema fragilità quando Bo viene ritrovato dalla zia Esther, equilibrato dal coraggio mostrato recandosi sull’isola Segreta insieme a Scipio per scoprire il mistero del Carosello (la mia parte in assoluto preferita del libro). show less

Cornelia Funke's young-adult classic, "The Thief Lord" is a wonderful amalgam of Annie, Harry Potter, Oliver Twist and Peter Pan based in the true-to-life fantasy-land of Venice, Italy.

The story centers around the run away brothers Prosper and Bo, whose mother recently passed away but left her boys with vivid stories of a city without streets and only canals, boats instead of cars, and palaces interspersed with a never-ending maze of teetering homes. Their Aunt Esther is only interested in adopting the younger Bo, and when faced with the prospect of being separated, the boys run from their native Germany to the Venice of their mother's bedtime tales.

The boys hook up with a colorful band of other homeless children, led by the enigmatic show more leader Scipio, known as The Thief Lord. Using a recently abandoned movie theater as their home, the children have carved out a reasonable existence for themselves, until Aunt Esther employs Venice detective Victor Getz to track down Prosper and Bo.

The homeless children engender the Lost Boys from Peter Pan, while a combination of character qualities encapsulate Peter Pan himself. The story is actually quite simple and reads very quickly at almost 350 pages.

My 7th-grade son read the book in advance of our family trip to Venice and couldn't wait for me to read it as well. My 4th grader shouldn't have any problem with the readability and concepts, and I think even my High Schooler will enjoy the simple innocence of the characters as well as the solidly colorful sense of Venice that Funke provides. The sweet spot for the story is probably high-reading 4th graders through 6th grade. And I'd highly recommend this for any children traveling to Venice.

There's a rather dramatic shift towards fantasy in the last third of the book. It took me by surprise, since the first two-thirds are quite realistic and down to earth. At first thrown off and not particularly appreciating the shift, I've found myself thinking about the conclusions and simple messages of the story and found myself rather liking it.

While rich with the emotions of the homeless children, Prosper and Scipio in particular, the story is very appropriate for most ages, with no violence, and clear children's-story morality. show less

I was not expecting the mature themes I found in the Thief Lord. I had thought to find more derring-do and adventure, and while there is some of that, the focus of this story is the not so easy life of a collection of orphans, how they carve a place in the world for themselves and how that world eventually changes. In short, this is a story about growing up and what that really means to both children and adults.

There is a lot of excitement and mystery in this novel and the story picks up and never really stops moving. Each chapter entices you to read more by showing you in detail the ophan's lives and the charming Thief Lord. Every time one riddle is solved, a new one takes its place, always backed by the one big question, "Just who is show more the Thief Lord?". I kept promising myself one more chapter and ended up finishing it one sitting. In all the adventure, romantic history and whimsy are some very real moments where the kids worry about starving, being slaves and getting captured. I was impressed with how the 'villains' were portrayed - as simply very flawed people and not 'bad' people. Many children have different reasons to want to "run away from home" at some time or another. Funke makes Thief Lord a kind of cautionary tale, not by being preachy, but by showing the realities of what happens when children are on their own in the world with no one to look after them. I do wish that some of the characters full histories were revealed; they weren't necessary to enjoy the story but there were quite a few teasing hints that are never followed up on. I also believe that Prosper is a saint. The amount of patience that boy has is astounding.

I know that I would have bawled my eyes out if I had read this as a kid. As it was (in my twenties) I was rather misty eyed from time to time but I also smiled often too.

Context Free Quote:
Riccio self-consciously hid his face between his soft toys. "From the Salute Church," he mumbled. "There are hundreds, probably thousands lying around there. So it doesn't really matter if I take a few every now and then. Why should we spend our precious money on candles? I swear," he grinned at Hornet, "I always blow a kiss for each one." show less