Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Newt Scamander’s Guide to the Magical Creatures of the Wizarding World
This wide-ranging collection of magical and mythological creatures gives the Muggle world a chance to get a closer look at the hidden magical community. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, written by J.K. Rowling under the name of the magizoologist Newt Scamander, is one of the Hogwarts textbooks that Harry Potter reads.
Author: J.K. Rowling, writing as Newt Scamander
Title: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2001)
Format: English hardcover (Bloomsbury Children’s Books), 144 pages
Scope: A Hogwarts textbook from the Harry Potter world; an A–Z of magical creatures
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1408880717 (ASIN 1408880717)
A Book Disguised as Fiction
The book is presented to Muggles as a work of fiction, so as not to arouse too much criticism and scepticism in the non-magical world. It covers a wide variety of fantastic animals.
Creature by Creature
Readers can learn the most important features of each creature and where it lives, as well as what it eats and what abilities it has. The animals are classified according to how dangerous they are, and they represent the creatures discovered over the years by wizards like Newt Scamander.
A Book for Charity
The book was first published in 2001, together with its companion Quidditch Through the Ages, to raise money for the British charity Comic Relief. A foreword by Albus Dumbledore explains the cause, and the copy reproduced is supposedly Harry Potter’s own, complete with handwritten comments by Harry and Ron in the margins: jokes about Hagrid’s pets, complaints about homework, and remarks on creatures they have actually met. Those scribbles are among the funniest things Rowling wrote.
The Ministry Classification
Each creature is given a danger rating by the Ministry of Magic, from X, boring, to XXXXX, known wizard killer that cannot be trained or domesticated. The entries range from dragons, with a page on each breed, to the humble Flobberworm, and include many animals familiar from the novels, such as the hippogriff, the basilisk, the phoenix, the house-elf’s cousin the gnome and the treasure-hunting Niffler. Newt’s introduction also explains how wizards keep magical creatures hidden from Muggles, a theme the films would later develop.
Newt Scamander
The fictional author is a magizoologist who worked for the Ministry of Magic’s Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and travelled the world researching his book. In 2016, Rowling expanded his story in the first of the Fantastic Beasts films, which she wrote herself and in which Eddie Redmayne played Newt as a young man in 1920s New York. Two sequels followed, in 2018 and 2022. A later edition of the book added new creatures and a new foreword by Newt himself.
Who Will Enjoy It
Young readers who love the Harry Potter books and enjoy browsing; it is short, funny and full of detail, and it makes a fine gift. Its humour depends on knowing the novels, so it is best read after the first few books.
A Textbook With Personality
Part of the fun is the tone of the entries, which mimic real field guides while slipping in jokes and asides. Newt’s descriptions are precise about habitat and behaviour, then add a dry comment about the foolish wizards who have tried to keep the creature as a pet, or a warning that a certain beast’s eggs are a Class A Non-Tradeable Good. The fake bibliographic details, including the claim that this is the fifty-second edition, add to the illusion that the wizarding world is real and has its own long scholarly tradition.
Reading Tip
Look for the creatures that appear in the films, and compare the descriptions.
Why Read It
It is a short, witty companion to the Harry Potter books and the starting point for the Fantastic Beasts films. Fans will enjoy the humour and the little details that expand the magical world.
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Part of the reading recommendations featured on books.sapiensverbum.com.
