The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

Spoiler Warning: If you have not read all 7 Harry Potter books, read at your own risk. (I may be an evil cousin, but no one should be robbed the experience of reading the Harry Potter series.) However, if you haven't read them by now, shame on you. Stop reading this review and go read the bloody series!

We've all heard such timeless (Disney) classics as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. These are our beloved childhood bedtime stories, our fairy tales. Well, Wizards and Witches have classic fairy tales too! Five of which can be found in the Wizarding classic The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Just like Muggle fairy tales, each of the five stories deals with a different theme and teaches a lesson. However, as a Muggle, it may be difficult to truly grasp all of the lessons taught by Beedle the Bard. To help us better understand these magical tales, Albus Dumbledore has kindly given extensive commentary on each tale. (The commentary was published without Dumbledore's consent. It was found among his other belongings after his dead.)

Anyone who has read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is at least vaguely familiar with this book of tales. Hermione receives a copy, from Dumbledore if I am not mistaken. Well, Rowling decided to publish a copy of Beedle's tales for Muggle enjoyment. All the sales go to the Children's High Level Group, a charity that provides support to children in need. The children tend to be poor, disabled, or from ethnic minorities. If you want to support a lovely charity AND get a little light-hearted reading on the side, or vice versa, this is definitely the book for you.

If you are still not convinced that this book is worth the buy, here is my criticism of the book (which happens to be mostly good).

The tales themselves are nothing special. They're mostly just cute. The stories are imaginative, but they're nothing like the books. The books are very long, detailed, and everything mentioned seems to have some significance before the series ends (which is one of the reasons I love Rowling's writing so much). These tales are short. There's no time for that kind of no-loose-ends writing. However, Rowling makes up for it by adding Dumbledore's commentary. His words are thoughtful, witty, and all around awesome! Not only does he add insight into the theme and lesson of each story. He also rambles on about little side notes (from letters between himself and Lucius Malfoy to his criticism of Madam Bloxam's revised version of Beedle's "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot"), both of which were quite humorous to say the least. Dumbledore will keep you alternating between the thinker pose (hand stroking the chin) and simply laughing uncontrollably and a variation of a giggle fit.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Beedle's tales. The book is a very quick read, which was rather disappointing to me, but it's still a great little book.

I give The Tales of Beedle the Bard a respectable 3.5 daggers out of 5.







Yours without magic,
Gabriel Gethin

Harry Potter Fun!!!

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Originally, we were going to refrain from reviewing Harry Potter the Seventh. But then we began to feel so very, very left out. So here it goes: Harry Potter is a character that many of us have grown up with. We wanted his final story to end spectacularly. Alas, it was not to be. I suppose that Rowling, being richer than the queen and knowing that her legions of loyal readers would buy the book no matter what, decided that she could cop out on the final volume. This is incredibly sad. I wanted to like the book. Truly I did. But somehow, it didn't work.

I was actually racing with one of my cousins (of the non-evil sort) to finish the book (I won, of course), so I didn't realise how disappointed I was until I gave it some thought. And there it was, the awful truth: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a creature of deathly boredom.

And OH! The epilogue. Of all the things that could have gone wrong, this was the worst. How could she make everything so...perfect? I shall refrain from saying anything more on the subject, for fear of being hunted down and butchered by a vengeful not-yet-finished reader.

Despite the fact that this Deathly Boredom was so...well, deathly, I feel that I must give it no less than three out of five daggers. Just because I grew up with the series. And the first three books were totally made of awesome.

--Avery Trelaine





Aislinn says,

So, unlike Avery, I am going to assume that everyone reading this had read Harry Potter and the Deathly Boredom, er, that is, Hallows.

SPOILER ALERT!! If you are one of the, like, four people who haven't yet finished, don't read this . . .

I'm going to do this by character, because... because because.

Harry-- Our dear main character was as much of an annoying angst-ridden idiot as always. Only this time, he was an annoying, angst-ridden idiot who was also Jesus. And has anyone else noticed that he's not that good at magic? No, seriously. I mean, who in their right mind would make him head of the auror department? (This is what he goes on to do-- JKR said so.) I was so depressed that he didn't die.

Ron-- Went from being kind of a pathetic loser to being entirely a pathetic loser.

Hermione-- Lost all her awesome. No, really. She went from being all "Get out of my way or I'll turn you into a moose" to "Oh, Ron, you're soooo clever! And also, I'm suddenly not nearly as competent a witch as I used to be!"

Ginny-- If Harry Potter dumped me 'for my safety,' I would most certainly not just sit around and wait for him to come back to me. Then again, I wouldn't date Harry Potter in the first place. Also, JKR tells us that Ginny became a professional Quiddich player, but then left her job when she married Harry. No, Ginny! No! Don't let patriarcial society keep you down! BREAK THE GLASS CEILING!!

Malfoy-- Most certainly did not live up to his potential. He could have been so awesome, but instead, he was just a whiney, incompetent loser. I would also like to take this opportunity to note that if Draco had, in fact, fufilled his potential for awesome, he and Ginny would have made a great couple. (Hey, don't look at me like that. It's true.)

Dumbledore-- The Headmaster was dead, yes. But he was in the book more than any other, except perhaps the sixth. I think JKR simply couldn't fathom writing a Harry Potter book without Dumbledore.

THE DEATHSTICK-- Yes, it's a wand, but it really deserves its own character listing. It had so much personality. And also, it's called the deathstick. And Voldy always said "Deathstick" last, like: "It is mine! The Elder Wand! The Wand Of Destiny! THE DEATHSTICK!!!"*. At which point I always burst into a fit of hysterical laughter (no matter how serious the situation was supposed to be).

*This is not an actual quote from Deathly Hallows. But it's pretty darn close.

Dissapointedly, cynically, thanking-God-it's-over,

Note: We know that this post is seeming to be spreading the HP hate. But really, we love it as much as all you crazy fangirls. Okay, maybe not quite as much. As in, we don't write any Dramione fanfiction. Or any fanfiction, for that matter.
But still. We love Harry Potter. We just hide it really, really well.


Twyla says:

Now for my opion of this wonderfulness. Well, I thought it was ok. I wasnt thrilled with it but there were certain parts I liked. It was pretty, ok very predictable. Especially the ending. The very very end, 19 years later, it was waaay to perfect and like *sigh* aw, how sweet. Lets all go to bed and have sweet dreams because everyone lived happily ever after. After all of what Harry went though, wouldn't he have some emotional drawbacks he needed to work on? Or insane fans he had to outrun?

After saying that, I give Deathly Hallows a 3.5 daggers out of 5.

--Twyla Lee