Brave Hearts: Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke

It's almost her twelfth birthday, and Igraine of Pimpernel Castle doesn't aspire to becoming the bride of a charming prince, or even a powerful sorcerer like her parents, The Fair Melisande and Sir Lamorak the Wily. Igraine longs to be a knight in armor, astride a powerful warhorse, protecting the weak and rescuing damsels in distress.

When her birthday gift turns out to be a magic-assisted suit of weightless and waterproof armor, Igraine feels that there is no obstacle to her life's calling except possibly the teasing of her older brother Albert. But as her wizardly parents complete the spell upon her armor, a slip of the tongue turns them into pigs, just as an evil wizard Osmond and the malevolent Rowan the Heartless launch an attack upon Pimpernel Castle to satisfy his lust for the magic books which reside there. Unfortunately, Albert has failed to replenish the family's supply of red giant's hairs, leaving Melisande and Lamorak powerless to assume their wizardly shapes and powers to protect the castle and its irreplaceable library.

Donning her new armor, Igraine volunteers to take on the quest to retrieve the necessary hairs to break the spell. Leaving the student wizard Albert to defend the castle as best he can and disguising herself as a peasant farmer girl, she steals Lancelot, a white charger from the evil wizard's stable, and journeys to the far dark hills, where the giant Garleff gallantly gives up the hairs. He then warns Igraine that Osmond and Rowan are fearful opponents and takes her to meet a potential ally, the Sorrowful Knight of the Mount of Tears, who is in self-imposed exile for failing in single combat to protect three fair ladies from the evil Rowan.

The Sorrowful Knight agrees to escort her back to her castle, but finding Pimpernel already surrounded and under siege, Igraine and the Sorrowful Knight flee to a secret underground entrance to the castle. Igraine's porcine parents are thrilled to have the giant's hairs, the last ingredient for the potion which will restore them to human form, but, alas, the process requires one hour in which the castle's magical defenses will be inoperable, making all of them, not to mention their magical book collection, vulnerable to Osmond's evil powers. Bravely, despite three previous unhorsings in jousts with Rowan the Heartless, the Sorrowful Knight offers to buy time for the wizards by staging a return match with the evil knight. When Igraine learns that Rowan the Heartless wins his tourneys only through the use of a magic-imbued lance, she uses her great-great grandfather's dragon-skin cloak of invisibility to disable the cheater's lance right inside his own tent.

Realizing her wish to serve as a knight's squire, Igraine's champion, the Sorrowful Knight, bests his enemy in a fair challenge just as Lamorak and Melisande return to their full powers and defeat the evil wizard and his army. Castle Pimpernel and its library of enchantments are saved, and Igraine the Brave is on her way to full knighthood.

A whimsical adventure with a feisty and admirable young heroine makes Cornelia Funke's Igraine The Brave a sprightly read for lovers of medieval magic and chivalry. The author's delightful pen-and-ink drawings liberally adorn the text and add much to this jolly knight's tale.