I liked the Harry Potter books quite a bit, though I wouldn't call myself a passionate fan. But I was willing enough to purchase the J.K. Rowling's charity-project fairy-tale collection, The Tales of Beedle the Bard
(Arthur Levine Books/Scholastic, 2008; editor: Arthur Levine), in a nice little hardcover edition and stressed out enough lately to find fantasy-world fairy tales fine bedtime reading. It's a thin book (a pleasant change from Ms. Rowling) with only a hundredish pages of story (including commentary "by Albus Dumbledore") and not very many words on each page. The stories themselves seemed to be aimed at fairly young readers (I'm not a good judge of how young), and none of them are exactly contenders for a Hugo nomination, but they're workable enough as fairy tales and the commentary is clearly aimed higher. That's not always a plus; the morals of the stories are hard to miss, so I didn't actually need them spelled out for me in detail, even in wizard-world mufti of the thump-on-the-head level of subtlety (Malfoys don't like stories with sympathetic Muggles or wizard-Muggle romance; what a shock.) But Rowling is (laudably) aiming at a larger audience in hammering home "Dumbledore's" distaste for bowdlerization, and the commentaries do fill in some background details that will add depth when I get around to rereading the last couple of Harry Potter novels.
I won't say much about the stories themselves. They don't break any exciting new ground in the realm of fairy tales, and I'm sure someone will get a fine academic paper out of pointing out the standard story-elements. Selfishness is punished and selflessness is rewarded. Trying to cheat Death works out poorly. Wizards who treat Muggles badly and Muggles who treat wizards badly lose in various ways. They're fine little tales that would still be fine without the Potter-universe frosting. I enjoyed reading them and would be happy to read them aloud some time to an appropriate audience.
Like the Harry Potter books themselves, this is a nicely designed little book with cover art by Mary GrandPré and some interior art for whom the artist is not specified - GrandPré again? Rowling herself? Kudos to art director David Saylor and book designer Eiizabeth B. Parisi and to Scholastic for being nice enough to have a credits page at the end that names names right down to the Continuity Editor (Cheryl Klein), which must be quite the critical role in a series with so many persnickety little details and extremely persnickety fans waiting to pounce on an error. And I have to love a credits page that lists the font and the printing company.
I recommend this book for Harry Potter fans, of course, and for anyone with a taste for fairy tales or with kids to read them to. Net proceeds from the book are going to the Children's High Level Group, a British charity founded by Rowling which works with and for vulnerable children.
I'd heard they weren't really outstanding, but it's nice to know the money goes to charity.
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | February 08, 2009 at 08:50 PM
Wizards who treat Muggles badly and Muggles who treat wizards badly lose in various ways.
This reminds me of Larry Niven's heroic-fantasy story What Good Is A Glass Dagger? Its narrator is a wizard who comments on the usual runins between wizards and barbarians that, if the former loses, the world just got rid of a lousy wizard. If the barbarian loses, the world's average intelligence goes up.
As for Rowling's story and how selfishness is punished and selflessness is rewarded... True, it is a fairy tale.
Posted by: Serge | February 09, 2009 at 01:17 AM
The book is pleasant enough, but I was underwhelmed.
Posted by: Mary Aileen | February 09, 2009 at 12:40 PM
Mary Aileen:
I can't seem to work up any praise stronger than "fine" for the actual stories.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 09, 2009 at 12:50 PM
Susan: That sounds about right. My reviews keep adding up to "not a total waste of time." I agree that the Dumbledore books are better than the actual stories, but that's faint praise indeed.
Posted by: Mary Aileen | February 09, 2009 at 06:04 PM
I suspect the stories would be pretty good for a child not already familiar with a wide variety of classic fairy tales. I'm just not that child. I liked them okay, I just can't bounce with enthusiasm over them.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 09, 2009 at 07:11 PM
I just read a couple of short alternate-universe future-Harry Potter fan-written stories and found them much more interesting than ol' Beedle's stuff. Here and here.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 11, 2009 at 04:59 PM
Susan, those links don't work when I click on them. (It looks like you've somehow got HTML mixed up inside the link.)
Posted by: Paul A. | February 11, 2009 at 08:34 PM
Paul,
Fixed now. Sorry!
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 11, 2009 at 08:47 PM
No problem, Susan.
They're interesting stories, but it bugs me that they start out with the Sorting Hat cheating. It seems to me that if you're setting out to prove that Slytherins have something to offer, you should do it using genuine Slytherins. (I suppose maybe the author wanted a sympathetic point-of-view character, but then if it's out of the question for a Slytherin to be sympathetic the whole enterprise is probably doomed anyway.)
Posted by: Paul A. | February 14, 2009 at 11:02 AM
SPOILERS in this comment for the fanfic linked above!
I'm not sure it's cheating; the Hat almost sorted Harry Potter into Slytherin back in the first book. Bravery and ambition (IIRC that is the defining characteristic of Slytherins, but correct me if I am misremembering) are not mutually exclusive. If Albus's desire is to be great or to prove himself or simply to get out from under the shadow of his father and older brother, then Slytherin isn't necessarily an insane concept.
If anything, you could say Harry cheated by begging the Hat NOT to put him in Slytherin.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 14, 2009 at 05:16 PM
I always figured that Harry's Slytherin potential, assuming that it wasn't just cross-contamination from You-Know-Who, arose from his upbringing - one can see how he might want to amass personal power to make sure that nobody could ever again treat him the way the Dursleys did. If Albus had that kind of upbringing, I should be very much surprised.
(And I don't think that Harry cheated at his Sorting: all he did was express a preference, which the Hat was free to ignore if it wanted to. "Ignored" is perhaps the wrong word - an expressed preference, as I think Dumbledore says somewhere, is a useful data point when weighing the question of which House he would do best in - but it might still have decided that other considerations tipped the balance toward Slytherin.)
The question of whether a desire for a great reputation is a Slytherin trait is a bit shadowy, I think: we're told that "ambition" is the Slytherin thing, but ambition for what, exactly?
One fan essay I've read argued that Slytherins are ambitious for power and influence, regardless of whether it comes with general recognition; eminence grise is a very Slytherin sort of occupation. People for whom the reputation is the important thing end up in the House of Heroes, Gryffindor, like Gilderoy Lockhart.
Posted by: Paul A. | February 15, 2009 at 10:12 AM
I think Albus' hypothetical issue would be a Miles Vorkosigan one: getting out from the shadow of a very famous and accomplished father. Look at Miles' fantasy to some day have Aral introduced as "the father of Miles" rather than Miles' permanent tagline "the son of Aral" and his pleasure at becoming an Auditor because that was one thing Aral hadn't ever done.
Or, more malevolently, look at George W. Bush.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 15, 2009 at 05:53 PM
Susan... look at George W. Bush
I did everything I could to do the exact opposite of for most of the 21st Century.
Posted by: Serge | February 15, 2009 at 06:04 PM