An Afternoon With Harry

So today was the release date for The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the book of wizarding fairy tales form JK Rowling. My copy was pre-ordered (of course) and came in the mail this morning. I spent my afternoon reading it.

It was wonderful!

The fairy tales themselves are sweet and true to the universe JK Rowling created with the book series. They're dark (as all good fairy tales are), relatively simple, and come with morals attached--morals for wizard and muggle children alike.

It's the commentary "found" in Dumbledore's office that really makes the book something worth reading; each story is followed by a little essay written approximately 18 months before Dumbledore's death. The essays are not only filled with bits of new information about the wizarding world that couldn't be squeezed into the 7 novels or the 2 Hogwarts textbooks previously released (like the existence of a school we'd never heard of, the Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts--WADA), but are written with all of Dumbledore's self-assurance, silliness and occasional snark.

A few quotes:

As the emminent Wizarding philosopher Bertrand de Pensées-Profondes [Bertrand of Profound Thoughts] writes in his celebrated work A Study into the Possibility of Reversing the Actual and Metaphysical Effects of Natural Death, with Particular Regard to the Reintegration of Essence and Matter:

"Give it up, it's never gonna happen.

And

This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favorite Death Eater.

I fully enjoyed the book, and I'm sure I'll go back to it again and again, just as I have with the novels.

Now we've just got to wait until July and the release of the Half-Blood Prince movie for our next taste of the Wizarding World.