Cornelia Funke is a German writer. Her famous story «Inkheart» is a rich story centred around a 12-year-old book lover whose father has a unique gift for bringing the world of books to life. «Inkheart» was the first in a trilogy and Funke followed with «Inkspell» and «Inkdeath». Before writing «Inkheart», she learns about booksellers, book collectors, book thieves and even book murderers as well as reading about martens and fire-eaters. She then imagines the characters and the places they might go, writes down lines for the first 20 chapters. Then, and only then — after about six months — she writes the first sentence. A novel will take her about a year to write. She always does her own sketches — in pen and ink, she creates a picture of her own characters to help her write about them. She married printer Rolf Funke in 1981. They have two children, Anna and Ben. Up until 2005 the Funke family lived in Hamburg, Germany, when they moved to Los Angeles. Sadly, in March 2006, Rolf died of cancer.

Beth Jones was only eight years old when she first tried playing the drums. This was during a lunchtime music club at school, which she only went to because it was cold and rainy. Also her friends were in the playground playing hockey – a sport that Beth hated. Of all the musical instruments that the teacher had in the music room, the drums were the most interesting to Beth. She thought it was cool that there were many different shapes and sizes of drums, and she wanted to hit them, to see what they sounded like.Now Beth is thirteen and gives concerts around the country. She also has her own YouTube channel and gets over a million hits a year. What’s amazing is that Beth hasn’t ever been to a drum lesson. ‘You can learn anything on the internet, so I’ve never felt it was important for me to take classes,’ explains Beth.Giving concerts wasn’t easy for Beth at the beginning because usually she only played drums alone in her bedroom when she came home from school. At her first concert, she played in a band with adults. She could feel hundreds of pairs of eyes looking at her, and that made her feel frightened.So, does Beth enjoy being famous now? ‘I didn’t plan to be famous,’ she says. ‘All I want is to show others what I love. I don’t think I’m someone special. I just want everyone to have a great time at my concerts.’

Christopher Paolini was born on 17 November 1983 1)_______ . He has lived most of his life in Paradise Valley, Montana 2)______ . The tall, jagged Beartooth Mountains rise on one side 3)_______ . Snowcapped most of the year, 4)_______ .Christopher was homeschooled by his parents. As a child, he often wrote short stories and poems, 5)_________ , and read much. Some of his favorite books were Bruce Coville’s «Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher», Frank Herbert’s «Dune», 6)__________ . The idea of «Eragon» began as daydreams of a teen.