Harry Potter Schoolbooks: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them / Quidditch Through the Ages

Slim and quick reads, these books nevertheless are a great deal of fun. "Quidditch" provides us with a brief evolution and history of everyone's favorite broomstick-riding sport, with rules of play, focuses on top world teams, and the revelation that Americans don't really play Quidditch on the world-class level, preferring an American variation called "Quodpot." "Fantastic Beasts" is a brisk and humorous guide to mythical, er, totally real monsters and magical creatures from the Acromantula (giant spider) to the Yeti. This book is Harry Potter's own personal copy, and is enlivened with Harry and Ron's writing and jokes in the margins of the book. Both books feature a wonderfully dry-humored introduction by Albus Dumbledore. Both books are written with a friendly and light sense of humor that's delightful to read and makes great background for the serious Harry Potter fan. Quidditch team Chudley Cannons' motto is said to have been changed from "We shall conquer" to "Let's all just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best."

The most important reason to buy these books, however, is to support Comic Relief UK, the British relief organization set up to help children in the disadvantaged countries of the world. Although we can't save the world from manticores or score the winning goal in a Quidditch World Cup match, we can still be heroes by supporting this great cause.


Clever, funny, and completely integrated with the novels   March 14, 2001
 156 out of 161 found this review helpful

J.K. Rowling has given us facsimile editions of two of Harry Potter's schoolbooks, all proceeds going to children's charities around the world. The books are only 64 pages each, but the print is very small and they are crammed with remarkably interesting information that fills out the background of Harry Potter's world. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore himself provides introductions to these special editions.

"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", by "Newt Scamander", describes all the magical creatures we have seen in the first four books of the series, plus many more. Harry's marginal notes (along with Ron Weasley's, since Ron's own copy apparently fell apart) remind us of many of his adventures. "Quidditch Through the Ages", by "Kennilworthy Whisp" shows how this magical sport (along with similar ones) has evolved, and also provides a history of magic broom technology with a good deal of supplementary material shedding light on wizard-Muggle relations throughout history.

Both books provide many hints towards a better understanding of what's really going on in the "backstory" in the Harry Potter books. They may not suffice to keep Potter fans totally satisfied until the next book comes out, but they'll surely create a big demand for other "supplementary" materials.


A part of Harry Potter we didn't know.   March 24, 2001
 64 out of 66 found this review helpful

No Harry Potter fan can be without these little books. Both of the books are modeled after the textbooks mentioned in the series and are written by the great authors Kennilworthy Whisp and Next Salamander(but with the help of JK Rowling). They also have a foreward by Dumbledore, in which Dumbledore explains that the purpose of releasing the books for muggles is to raise money for charity. Any muggle will have fun reading all of the many sections of these books about Quidditch and magical beasts. The Fantastic Beasts book, which I have read the most, is is a very good branch of Rowling's imagination. It talks about many different creatures, both dangerous and peaceful. Harry and Ron have written many notes in the book, some relating to the Chudley Cannons, some about Hagrid's love of monsters, and many about what they learned from facing monsters(they can confirm that there are giant spiders in Scotland). The other book is taken from the Hogwarts library, and we can tell that all of the Quidditch players have used this book often. It describes the history of Quidditch, the rules, the ancient forms of Quidditch, and the popularity of the game. It's pretty amazing what one can learn from these books. We learn that dodos aren't really extinct, but are magical birds that disappear from muggle sight. We learn that fairies lay eggs and grow in cocoons. We learn that America, Quodpot is more popular than Quidditch. We also learn the ten most common fouls of the seven hundred fouls that exist. We can even learn how many dollars Galleons are equivilent to. These books help us learn a part of the Harry Potter books we didn't know. Anyone impatient for the next book in the series will find relief here. I can assure you will love laughing at the cute humor. I hope for more text books in the future!


Get your Harry fix and support a great cause!   March 13, 2001
 56 out of 59 found this review helpful

Although the wait for 2002 and "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is going to be a hard one for a lot of people, these two brief but fun books should fill the gap admirably as well as supporting a great cause. Released for the first time (well, to the general Muggle public), here's two of Harry Potter's schoolbooks, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and "Quidditch Through the Ages."

Slim and quick reads, these books nevertheless are a great deal of fun. "Quidditch" provides us with a brief evolution and history of everyone's favorite broomstick-riding sport, with rules of play, focuses on top world teams, and the revelation that Americans don't really play Quidditch on the world-class level, preferring an American variation called "Quodpot." "Fantastic Beasts" is a brisk and humorous guide to mythical, er, totally real monsters and magical creatures from the Acromantula (giant spider) to the Yeti. This book is Harry Potter's own personal copy, and is enlivened with Harry and Ron's writing and jokes in the margins of the book. Both books feature a wonderfully dry-humored introduction by Albus Dumbledore. Both books are written with a friendly and light sense of humor that's delightful to read and makes great background for the serious Harry Potter fan. Quidditch team Chudley Cannons' motto is said to have been changed from "We shall conquer" to "Let's all just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best."

The most important reason to buy these books, however, is to support Comic Relief UK, the British relief organization set up to help children in the disadvantaged countries of the world. Although we can't save the world from manticores or score the winning goal in a Quidditch World Cup match, we can still be heroes by supporting this great cause.


Titanic Texts   March 14, 2001
 52 out of 54 found this review helpful

Leave it to J.K. Rowling to make school textbooks interesting. To appease the millions (and millions . . . and millions) of fans of the Harry Potter saga (who won't be getting a new novel until sometime after the next millenium . . . at least it feels that way), Rowling has written two brief books used by the Hogwarts students. One is a library book; the other is owned by Harry (but used by Ron as well). Clever and informative, both books contain references to all four books in the saga while whetting our appetite with new information from the world of Harry Potter. I especially liked "Quidditch Through the Ages" which had facts about the history of the wizard sport and many of the teams throughout the world. And wouldn't you know it? America isn't preoccupied with Quidditch like the rest of the world. We have our own wizarding sport--Quodpot, a basketball-type game with exploding balls. I guess we haven't taken to soccer like the rest of the world either, so we needed our own wizarding sport as well. "Fantastic Beasts," on the other hand, contains wonderfully hilarious notes by Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the margins of the text that had me flipping through the pages just to read them. The books are good and well written, but they are definitely for the Harry Potter initiated. Anyone diving into these without any knowledge of Bertie Botts or Hagrid or hippogriffs will find them about as comprehensible as a Quantum Physics book. For those in the know, enjoy! I did.