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ABSTRACT:
Book reviewed:
J.K. Rowling, "THE TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARD", London: Children's High Level Group / Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008, hardback, xvii + 109 pp., ISBN 978-0-7475-9987-6
EXTRACT:
Readers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final volume in J.K. Rowling's seven-tome wizarding epic, will recall the inset story 'The Tale of the Three Brothers', attributed to Beedle the Bard, which appeared at one of that book's most dramatic moments - in chapter 21, when Hermione reads out the tale to Harry and Ron, all three on the run from the Death Eaters, in the home of the perfidious Xenophilius Lovegood. At the time it struck me as a remarkably powerful fairy-tale in the best Brothers Grimm mode, and it is now an enormous pleasure to find it once again, alongside with four new stories from the Bard's storehouse, in this welcome companion volume to the Potter series. The new stories are: 'The Wizard and the Hopping Pot', 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune', 'The Warlock's Hairy Heart' and 'Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump'; 'The Tale of the Three Brothers' comes at the end.
J.K. Rowling has vowed there will be no more Harry Potter books as such, but ancillary volumes such as this - joining Quidditch Through the Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and to be joined at some point by Rowling's projected Potter encyclopaedia - do not amount to a breach of that promise, and represent an interesting extension of and commentary on the Potter phenomenon. The present offering appears as 'a collection of stories written for young wizards and witches' (Introduction, xi), written by Beedle the Bard in the fifteenth century and translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger. Each story is accompanied by notes attributed to Albus Dumbledore and further annotated in person by J.K. Rowling, who also signs the introduction. This amalgam of story, alleged translation, criticism and annotation in fact constitutes a highly sophisticated textual mix, and it may, I believe, be reasonably argued that with this little book Rowling is, once again, doing the world an educational service - this time by gently urging her younger readers along the much-needed path of textual awareness and intelligent criticism. Cervantes offered Don Quixote as an alleged translation from the Arabic; Edgar Allan Poe presented The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as his imaginary hero's adventures relayed to the world by himself; J.K. Rowling now serves up a set of narratives claimed to be written by one of her characters, translated by a second and commented on by a third.
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