The Tales of Beedle the Bard: J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding Fairy Tales, with Dumbledore’s Notes
The Tales of Beedle the Bard first appeared as a fictional book in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007), the seventh and final Harry Potter novel. There it is bequeathed to Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore, former headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. J.K. Rowling later wrote the book for real, and this little volume is the result.
Author: J.K. Rowling, with her own illustrations
Title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2008)
Format: English paperback (Bloomsbury Children’s Books), 144 pages
Scope: Five wizarding fairy tales with commentary by “Albus Dumbledore”; a Hogwarts Library book
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1408883090 (ASIN 1408883090)
A Book from the Wizarding World
In the novel, it is described as a popular collection of fairy tales for wizarding children. Ron Weasley knows the stories well, while Harry and Hermione had never heard of them because of their non-magical upbringing. The copy Hermione receives in Dumbledore’s will is an old edition: a small, ancient-looking book whose binding is stained and peeling in places, with a title embossed in runes on its cover.
Five Tales and a Headmaster’s Notes
The book contains five very different tales, each with its own magical character, which will delight readers with their humour and the thrill of mortal danger. They are ’The Wizard and the Hopping Pot’, ’The Fountain of Fair Fortune’, ’The Warlock’s Hairy Heart’, ’Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump’ and ’The Tale of the Three Brothers’, the story at the heart of Deathly Hallows.
Muggles and wizards alike will enjoy the commentary added at the end of each tale, written by Professor Albus Dumbledore, in which he reflects on the lessons the stories teach and at the same time reveals snippets of information about life at Hogwarts.
The Tale of the Three Brothers
The story readers know best is "The Tale of the Three Brothers", which Hermione reads aloud in Deathly Hallows. Three brothers cheat Death by building a bridge across a dangerous river, and Death, pretending to reward them, gives the first an unbeatable wand, the second a stone that brings back the dead and the third, the humblest, his own cloak of invisibility. Only the third brother outwits Death and greets him at the end "as an old friend". The tale is the key to the final novel’s plot, and reading it on its own shows how carefully Rowling built that ending.
Seven Handwritten Copies
The book began as a private project. In 2007 Rowling wrote and illustrated seven copies by hand, bound in leather and decorated with silver and stones. Six were given to people close to the Harry Potter books; the seventh was auctioned at Sotheby’s in December 2007 and bought by Amazon for £1.95 million, the money going to children’s charity. The printed edition followed in December 2008, presented as "translated from the ancient runes by Hermione Granger".
A Hogwarts Library Book
Beedle belongs to a small shelf of companion volumes, together with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, both first published in 2001 for Comic Relief. Each pretends to be an object from Harry’s world, and each raised money for good causes. Of the three, Beedle is the most literary: Dumbledore’s notes on each tale are witty, slightly pompous and full of glimpses into wizarding history, Lucius Malfoy’s family included.
Darker Than It Looks
"The Warlock’s Hairy Heart", about a young wizard who locks away his heart to avoid love, is genuinely grim, and Dumbledore remarks that parents often keep it from young children. The reviewer’s sense of "mortal danger" in these stories is well judged.
A Small Treasure
With illustrations by the author herself, this unique and magical book will last as a little treasure for years to come. It is short enough to read in an afternoon, and it works best after you have finished the seven novels, when Dumbledore’s asides carry their full weight. Royalties from the book have supported Rowling’s children’s charity, Lumos.
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