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Fairy Tales Plucked From Harry Potter Plot
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J.K. Rowling has spun a few fairy tales from a plot device in her last novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
In that book, Hermione Granger reads to Harry and Ron Weasley from Tales of Beedle the Bard, written into the plot as a book left to her by the late Hogwart’s headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. Specifically, she reads “The Tale of the Three Brothers.”
Now, a year later, four more tales exist.
Rowling penned them – and we mean that literally. As a supposed artifact from Hogwarts, Beedle Bard comes in handwritten format – Rowling’s of course, with her personal illustrations.
The book will be released December 4 .
Is it going to live up to expectations? Sales, yes, no doubt, especially timed for Christmas. Of young readers? Considering Rowling’s imagination, very likely. Of literary greatness? So far, we only know that Amazon.com is head over heels in love with it (or the money it will make from it).
That’s a fact, but Amazon’s reviewer, Daphne Durham, seems to have parted from reality in her over-the-top praise: "Whoa," she writes of handling the book. “The very fact of its existence (an artifact pulled straight out of a novel) is magical, not to mention the facts that only seven copies exist in all the world…”
Yeah, right.
She goes on to reveal the plots of the five tales including their outcomes – so you might or might not want to read them if you are planning on buying the book. The four new tales are “The Fountain of Fair Fortune”, “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart”, “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot”, and ”Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump.”
While Durham writes glowingly – no, gushes over, the creativity and “genius” of the stories, she is not the site’s typical reader/reviewer. She couldn’t be. The book hasn’t been released yet. We have to have months of hype first.
Durham is listed as an Amazon managing editor, formerly a buyer for the book selling behemoth. To call her PR job a review is unfair.
If you have any doubts, consider: At first, we are told, there were to be only six copies of this book, handwritten, jewel-encrusted, for Rowling’s friends. Then she made another copy to auction for charity. Sotheby’s in London put the “moonstone” edition on the block late last year and Amazon’s winning bid was £1.95 million or $3.98 million. A record for a modern literary manuscript, it’s claimed. Rowling donated her take to a children’s charity – one she co-founded so, presumably, she can still direct the spending. Meanwhile, Amazon has made 100,000 facsimiles of the special edition which it is now selling by advance reservation at $100 each.
Check my math: less production costs, the book will net $10 million, a handy $6 million profit.
Amazon’s collector’s edition features an exclusive reproduction of J.K. Rowling's handwritten introduction, 10 special illustrations, decorative metalwork and clasp, and replica gemstones. It is inside a velvet bag embroidered with Rowling’s signature, housed in a case of leather “alternative” disguised as a wizarding textbook from the Hogwarts library.
The common edition, which has a list price of $12.99, includes the same five fairy tales and Rowling’s introduction and standard illustrations reproduced from the original handcrafted book.
Both editions include “commentary” on each of the tales by Professor Dumbledore, evidently part of what Durham calls Rowling’s “trademark wit and imagination,” (fair enough), Aesop’s wisdom (If not always original) and the “occasional darkness of the Brother’s Grimm” (And how! Parents of young children might want to pre-read “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart” and consider whether their children might be disturbed by the violence or the disgusting imagery of a character licking a dismembered heart.)
Durham says each of the five tales reveals a lesson: the strength gained with a trusted friendship, the redemptive power of love, and the true magic that exists in the hearts of all of us.
None of these ideas are exactly original with Rowling. The plot twists and denouements, include not only a taste of Grimm, but seem to owe a debt to Oscar Wilde and Frances Hodgson Burnett, among others. Certainly the placebo effect of a magic device that isn’t really one has been done before (see Star Trek’s “Mudd’s Women,” for one.)
Last year Rowling claimed her suit against a Michigan man for writing a Harry Potter dictionary impaired her creative output. She was described as crying on the witness stand as she protested the man’s reference work as “stealing.” Since such literary reference works are commonplace and legitimate, some authors have suggested that Rowling has gone round the bend now that she’s off best-seller lists. Or, at least, has been crocodile tearing-up for publicity’s sake. Author Orson Scott Card, in fact, suggested she needs a trip to Oz. See his essay on the subject at http://www.linearpublishing.com/rhinostory.html
There has been no final ruling in the court case.
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