Silvertongue

A Silvertongue is a person who is gifted with the power to read people (including supposedly fictional characters) and items (things in general) in and out of books.

Description
The ability is possible to be passed on from parent to child, for example, Mortimer Folchart and later his daughter, Meggie Folchart as well.

A Silvertongue, however, can only read things out of books (worlds) as long as they're reading from written words. While this ability was originally thought to only apply when reading from books, they soon found a way to bypass this and have shown to be able to add more details to what the books themselves shown, by attaching a separate sheet or sheets (if more than one) piece of paper with their own words onto the book and from there reading from it.

History
When doing so Meggie demonstrated the ability to not only control the Shadow but how it acted, felt, or thought; however when the added page was removed the Shadow returned to Capricorn once more. Another way to add to a book also shown by Meggie was when she was writing on her arm, and reading it. While still holding Inkheart, showing that as long as a Silvertongue is holding onto a book they can write their own words and read them; although without necessarily having to write directly into the book.

This gift seems to very rare only appearing within a few individuals people, although when it does appear it is normally kept secret with the exception of those close, friends or family.

Dustfinger and Farid went to several other Silvertongues to try and read Dustfinger back in to Inkheart and the Inkworld but all of them were unsuccessful.

Behind the scenes

 * According to Cornelia Funke, the process of coming up with Silvertongues started with wanting to achieve "meeting the characters of a book":
 * She first pictured how the book characters would appear, initially envisioning them stepping out being as small as a Lilliputian, but quickly disregarded that idea for she knew she wanted the book characters to physically be just like regular people in real life.
 * The idea to have a human voice lure the characters out eventually came from her love for that skill - to read aloud brilliantly. To Funke, an amazing storyteller brings utter magic and makes the pages breathe in a way that often not even the moving images on screen can achieve.