#29 A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, by J. K. Rowling.
This is one of the three books that make up the Hogwarts Library collection. Honestly creating this collection was a genius idea on behalf of J. K. Rowling to do for her followers. Any loyal Potterhead would read these books instantly. They contain answers to our most shared questions about the history, literature, and creatures of the world that we didn’t learn while reading the pages of the Harry Potter series.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them begins with a Foreword written by Albus Dumbledore and he explains that this book was published by the group “Comic Relief” and how they have raised money to help those that are unfortunate through the magic of laughter and comedy. He later goes on to say things such as how this is a great book for wizards to learn about the creatures of their world, and if a muggle was reading this book, that they should know all of these creatures are all fictional…right. You can’t fool us Dumbledore!
Then the introduction is written by the “author” Newt Scamander. He expresses how he traveled around the world looking for these creatures to learn about them and to put together this text book; some of them he’s discovered to be friendly, while others he has had to beat back with a stick. This constant level of humor can be found throughout the entire “text book”.
My favorite additions to this book are the small “handwritten” notes and scribbles on the book that are supposedly made by Harry, Ron, and Hermione. They have small conversations on the margins, and a level of sassy comments by Harry that make anyone reading them laugh. This being a book about Magical Creatures, Hagrid’s name comes up a few times in ways that I almost felt sorry for him! Under Norwegian Ridgeback, the title is crossed out in “pen” and next to it is scribbled “Baby Norbert”. When describing Merpeople, the ones found in Scotland and Ireland are considered “less beautiful” which of course was scratched out and “ugly” was written in the margin.
I learned the history behind the Ministry of Magic and the long process of defining what a magical beast is, which reflects a parallel argument we Muggles once had in trying to discover what made animals different from us. The lines are not as clear cut as we might believe.
Personally I loved this book! I can’t wait to watch the movie inspired by the adventures of Newt Scamander in this year’s film. I give this a 5 out of 5.
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