In the seventh Harry Potter book, Hermione receives this book and one of the fairy tales serves as an essential plot point in it. So, what better idea than to write out all the fairy tales and sell them, too? Clearly, good idea. Each of these fairy tales is different and has its own little objective. There are five of them and at the end, Dumbledore comments on each, with some footnotes added by Hermione Granger. I won’t go into what each of them are, because I think we’ve seen a lot of reviews and it’s actually been a while since I read the book. I did want to put out a short review, though, just because I like to review everything I read.
My favorite story was the one featured in the actual Harry Potter books, incidentally. I liked the message about cheating death, and I liked that it reminded me of the Harry Potter series. Otherwise, I found these to be short, whimsical reads that fit in reasonably well with the universe but don’t really add all that much to it. Nice for completionists, and nice that a donation is made, but otherwise, nothing special, and not at all compared to the series itself.
Buy The Tales of Beedle the Bard
I was disappointed in this book, but I think it was me. I was expecting it to be as magical as the Harry Potter books were.
The Tale of the Three Brothers probably would have been my favorite, but I’d just read Deathly Hallows, so it felt a little repetitive reading it again so soon.
Hi Meghan. Thanks for stopping by this morning.
I was dissappointed in Beedle. I was hoping for a lot more from the commentary.
Well said and I couldn’t agree more. I’m glad I have it (and it was a good cause), but it wasn’t a wow book.
I do want to read this book (it’s been sitting on my shelf for awhile) but after reading all these reviews, my expectations aren’t too high! Thanks for the review.
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I enjoyed this one just because I do love fairy tales so much. I didn’t mind that it was such a little book, but I wouldn’t mind more stories, either!
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Stumbled on to your blog when I was searching for book reviews for Katherine Neville’s “The Eight”. And, I have been pretty much hooked since then.
I love your book reviews. And totally agree with this one…I felt a bit cheated after reading them. They just seemed too short and simplistic to me.
Read my review of the book here at:
http://nishitak.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/the-tales-of-beetle-the-bard-book-review/