Beedlemania is here! With the release of J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Harry Potter fans are thrilled. The book is a collection of fairy tales read by all the wizard children.
In Chapter 7 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Hermione is presented with a copy of a book called The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which Professor Dumbledore left her in his will. (Yes, he's dead. Sorry. Spoiler alert.) Because Hermione, like Harry, grew up in a Muggle family, she's never heard of the Tales, which are decribed as Aesop-like children's stories to be read to little wizarding kids. "Oh come on!" Ron says — he can't quite believe it. "All the old kids' stories are supposed to be Beedle's, aren't they? 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune'...'The Wizard and the Hopping Pot'...'Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump'."
One wonders if at that point Rowling knew she was going to actually be writing those stories. Obsessive planner that she is, she probably did.
At any rate, she's written them now — Scholastic has just published the actual Tales of Beedle the Bard, a volume that includes five stories: the three Ron mentions plus "The Tale of the Three Brothers" (which already appeared in full in Deathly Hallows) and "The Warlock's Hairy Heart." Beedle joins Quidditch Through the Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and, basically, all the movies as one of the minor but undeniable pleasures of the Potter canon. It's a book of meta-fairy tales — fairy tales for people who already live in a fairy-tale world where dragons and goblins are real.
The book is selling like crazy: the book is now #1 at
Amazon.com, where it is available at a nice discount off retail. The book is so popular that Warner Bros. is trying to figure out how to make a film out of the book. That's going to be a bit tricky, considering they are unrelated short stories. Still, there's a great appetite for all things Potter so perhaps the hopping pot is destined for the silver screen.
